With a lukewarm reception from its gameplay reveal that never managed to sway the mind of gamers, coupled with middling reviews from critics, it’s not really surprising to hear that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League hasn’t performed to what its publisher, Warner Bros. is expecting.

This was confirmed by Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels in the company’s quarterly financial earnings call where the exec said that the game “has fallen short of our expectations.”

Unfortunately, Warner Bros. didn’t say what the projected sales figures were, or how many copies the game has sold since it launched on February 2. However, Suicide Squad’s failure seems to have dragged down WB’s bottom line, as Wiedenfels also confirmed their game business was in for a “tough” year-on-year comparison. For reference, last year’s game sales from Warner Bros. went very well and mostly due to Hogwarts Legacy — a game that managed to be the best-selling game of 2023 (yes, even beating Call of Duty).

“This year, Suicide Squad, one of our key video game releases in 2024, has fallen short of our expectations since its release earlier in the quarter, setting our games business up for a tough year-over-year comp in Q1 – Gunnar Wiedenfels, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Financial Officer“

While Rocksteady Studios has been communicative enough when it comes to the game’s post-launch support and whatnot, it seems to be fighting a losing battle, as the game’s subreddit now fails to even have over 1,000 active people at any given time (with a subreddit subscriber count of over 25,000 at the time of this writing). Not only that, but on Steam, the game can’t even break 1,000 players concurrently either, as the game only has a 24-hour peak of 863 for today, with an all-time peak of 13,459 (data via Steam Charts).

Of course, there is the chance that Suicide Squad’s console player base is higher by a lot, but even if you factor it in, I suspect that number won’t go past five digits.

There is a chance Rocksteady can turn things around though. We’ve seen it happen multiple times when it comes to live service games, with the most recent game that was able to pull it off being Battlefield 2042.

Will Rocksteady Manage to Turn Things Around for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League?

We can’t say for sure. Unfortunately, Rocksteady and WB can’t really count on word of mouth right now, as the game is sitting on a Metacritic average of 60, with the user average even lower at 3.7. There is a lot of stuff planned for the game’s first year (which could very well be its last). This March, Rocksteady is bringing over the Joker as a new playable character, with content planned up to Season 4.Will this be enough to entice gamers? Maybe with a price reduction, proper support from devs and whatnot, it could, but it is an uphill battle.

If you’re curious what we thought of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, head on over here for our review where our reviewer states,”I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed. Disappointed by the potential of what this game could have been, and disappointed by what we got.”

Source: IGN