During Warner Bros.’s latest earnings call the company admitted that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has not met their expectations in terms of sales.
“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.” said Chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels.
It’s a big fall for Warner Bros. who are coming off the massive success of Hogwarts Legacy which was the best-selling game of 2023, a title it was confirmed to take when Nintendo revealed digital sales data for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
Warner Bros. didn’t reveal any specifics about how many copies Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has sold, so we can only speculate. The only data we have comes from Steam where we know it managed a lowly peak player count of 13,459 just after it was released. That number has now dropped considerably – over the last few days, it hasn’t managed to break 1,000 concurrent players.
Of course, a drop is expected as people finish up the campaign and move to other things. However, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has been positioned as a live-service game with a year of content planned, in taken in that context the numbers are very poor indeed. Contrast that against another four-player co-op game with live service elements: Helldivers 2, which has blown up in popularity thanks to its lower price tag, far cheaper microtransactions and excellent gameplay.
Suicide Squad’s stats are even worse when you take into consideration that it’s the first game from developer Rocksteady in nearly a decade. The company previously made the exceptional Batman: Arkham games and hopes were undoubtedly high that Suicide Squad would make a major impact.
If there’s any good news it’s that some players do seem to be having a good time with the game. On Steam it currently holds a user rating of ‘Very Positive.’ The critical reception was not so generous, though.
With a year of free content planned perhaps Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League can still turn things around.
Look out for my review whenever I actually get around to it.
