Rocksteady flew so high, for so long, off the back of the Batman: Arkham series. Then they got involved with Sweet Baby Inc. on a Suicide Squad game and it all came crashing down.
The narrative development and consultation company famously found itself at the center of a storm over the last 18 months when Sweet Baby Inc. Detected, a Steam curated group, started to draw attention to how the organisation re-wrote game content to put a more progressive spin on things.
Despite the usual suspects at Kotaku and similar platforms running interference for them, their name quickly became the kiss of death for video games. For Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League they at least re-wrote the comms chatter for missions, the overworld commentary, and the audio logs, but other accounts say more.
Either way, the failure of the game has now caused a big impact at Rocksteady Studios. They have announced wide restructuring and layoffs. Reports online, including one from Eurogamer (via Dark Horizons) say redundancies have taken place over the last month, with at least one department being halved. Another employee was made redundant in the middle of paternity leave.
Given the current environment within gaming studios, we imagine that went down well.
The report says the job losses are directly linked to the failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Warner Bros. Discovery has already blamed the game for a $200 million negative impact on their balance sheet.