After Calling Suicide Squad A "Disappointment" WB Games Boss Doubles Down on Live Service Games

As reported by our sister site GameSpot, during a Morgan Stanley-hosted event to shareholders and interested investors, the head of Warner Bros. Discovery's gaming division, J.B. Perrette, stated that the company's leadership viewed the overall sales and current online community for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was "disappointing." He highlighted the growing difficulties of AAA game development and that he was unclear about where the industry as a whole was going with the slowing of PlayStation 5 sales and Microsoft pivoting in a new direction with its consoles and games.

However, he went on to reiterate that there are no plans to scale back operations in gaming, but that the company would refocused to place a greater emphasis on live service games. Select quote from his talk include:

"We're doubling down on games as an area where we think there is a lot more growth opportunity that we can tap into with the IP that we have and some of the capabilities we have on the studio where we're uniquely positioned as both a publisher and a developer of games."

"Rather than just launching a one-and-done console game, how do we develop a game around, for example, a Hogwarts Legacy or Harry Potter, that is a live-service where people can live and work and build and play in that world in an ongoing basis?"

This is not the first time WB Games has suggested that Hogwarts Legacy might be the direction they be going with its future game projects. Hogwarts Legacy was the best-selling full-priced video game of 2023 in the United States and in other countries and even months after its release was still cracking the top tens on sales lists well into January 2024. The game was a massive financial success. As Kotaku reported, the game even broke a fourteen year record in which it was the first game since 2008 when a non-Rockstar or Call of Duty game was the best selling video game in the United States.

Nonetheless, the first hints of the possible negative impacts of this business strategy are already being felt. Dozens of indie titles published by Adult Swim Games, a subsidiary of Warn Bros. Discovery, have been pulled from marketplaces including Steam and PSN. Some developers, like the creator of Small Radios Big Televisions, announced that after their game got delisted, they would be making it freeware. The studio behind Soundodger+issued a detailed thread on Twitter about what they would be doing to preserve their game after Warner Bros. Discovery refused to budge about delisting their game:

This just reads like a complete asshole who is much better at telling investors what they want to hear than at actually running a gaming division.

"Hogwarts Legacy was a massive success. How do we turn it into something that people don't want and won't buy, like Suicide Squad?"

A live service Harry Potter MMO type game is not inherently a bad idea, but you can't just make 1000 live service games, because the player base to make them all successes does not exist. You need to pick your spots and do it smart. Meanwhile top notch single player games can produce a ton of revenue and while you can't sell the same players garbage for 10 years like you can with a live service game, you can sell them a new game every couple years. It's a model that has worked and continues to work, but the line doesn't go up as much in "projections" so there you go.

Meanwhile the shutting down of Adult Swim games just seems mean spirited and like a "we have to do something, this is something" move, perhaps made to impress Zaslav, who loves removing content. I can't imagine keeping those games on stores actually costs anything significant. Maybe the ones with ongoing IP licenses, but many have none. If pulling games off online stores was actually a big cost saver more studios and publishers would do it. Instead games are pulled down almost only for specific reasons like a remaster coming out or licenses expiring. If they're just shutting down Adult Swim so nobody will be in accounting to take in the money and pay developers that sucks and I don't see why WB games couldn't handle that.

The worsening reputation of WB in games will probably do more damage than any benefit gained from delisting a bunch of games.

It's amazing they're willing to make that the plan after Suicide Squad failed so dramatically and MK1's monetisation has been met with extreme backlash.

Gerstmann compared it with losing a bet and continuing to make the same bet.

The ghost of Midway is cackling and rattling its chains.

Are all of these companies chasing fortnite like companies were chasing world of warcraft? Where studios are forced to make live service games instead of mmos?

That's an apt comparison yeah. These big publishers have been doing this ever since Fortnite, PUBG, and Destiny 2 all got popular around the same time in 2018-2019. They saw a few live service games get popular then all concluded that every game needs to be like that to some degree. Even single player games where this type of live model is an extremely poor fit are being required to have these types of components because these execs somehow think everybody wants to play one game that has around 20-30 hours of actual content for hundreds of hours and buy a bunch of cosmetics.

Now of course they'll all point at Helldivers 2 while ignoring Helldivers 2 was designed as a live service multiplayer game from the ground up in a clever way and not a singleplayer/optional multiplayer game where the live service components are awkwardly shoe-horned in.

Amazing to watch a smaller, focused game like Helldivers 2 get a ton of attention while Warner Bros. wonders why their huge AAA title based on a less-than-beloved IP didn't do well.

Maybe lower the scope and cost of these AAA titles and they won't be hit-or-miss successes.

@cikame: They probably do see it as a bet. They don't understand it's a lot more like poker than roulette (in that even if you do things perfectly you can still flop, but there's a lot of skill involved) because they don't 'get' games, so they just keep betting, figuring that one of these things will pay off and cover the losses of the others. A lot of media business is like that.

@finaldasaThe problem is that the AAA developers' advantage is in size and scope. You need a passionate, well integrated, small team with vision to make a Helldivers 2 and those kinds of teams don't seem to exist at places like WB anymore. Meanwhile WB CAN make something like Arkham Knight, and no smaller developer can because of the cost and scope, so that's their market advantage.

It worked great for Hogwarts Legacy (IP is another big advantage for IP) and the lesson they drew was that in fact what they should do is make a mobile FTP game but with a bigger budget and charge up front for it.

It's got me thinking about whether these big (and persistent) projects get greenlit to keep more people in work for longer.

I'm aware of the irony of suggesting that when the industry is in a sea of cuts but some guys on the ground might prefer the security of dedicating 5 years of their life to a failure. I'm sure some of the project leads/managers probably think about maintaining headcount.

@shindig: They do. Enthusiasts have been pining for smaller games for quite a while but don't seem to remember the cost, studios would often fire 1/4 of the team after shipping their game then re-hire again after a year of pre-production. For better and for worse bigger games have made the industry more stable for people to work in.