Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League is looking to stir up controversy of a new kind, as it has now come to light that it is an always online game.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, here is what the FAQ says about its online connection requirement:
“IS AN INTERNET CONNECTION REQUIRED TO PLAY SUICIDE SQUAD: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE?
Yes, an internet connection is required to play Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League solo or via online co-op.”
The always online requirement is a very unpopular feature in video games among gamers. However, that does not mean their dislike means that it is an unnecessary feature, or for that matter, that they won’t play games that are always online.
Of course, the big elephant in the room here is that live service games, invariably referred to as games-as-a-service, are by their very nature, always online. Fortnite was always free-to-play, and because the battle royale genre required multiplayer, Epic designed that multiplayer to only be available online. Destiny 2 is free-to-play now, but spent a considerable amount of time being priced as a retail game. Destiny 2 has also always been an online only game.
While some fans want to argue that they could make content that is offline, and let the player play with bots, that is a misunderstanding of these types of games. Some games are deliberately designed around the idea that they would be played by many human players together. Fortnite and Destiny 2 are a long ways away from Unreal Tournament. The sophisticated nuances of their game designs encourage players to keep on playing, and hopefully, buying additional items.
So it seems that Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League might actually be a live service game, even if it initially didn’t appear that way. Rocksteady was not particularly known for making live service games, and their most recent release, Gotham Knights, did have online multiplayer, but allowed you to switch to offline multiplayer with bots.
This may also be a case of Warner Bros Games attempting to obfuscate the true nature of this game, but I don’t think so. The same FAQ makes it clear that Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League has microtransactions in the form of in-game cosmetics, and a battle pass, a popular monetization route for live service games today. We, in fact, also covered this previously.
While we can see a clear narrative campaign for Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, that probably will not last much longer than eight hours, Rocksteady also promises more free DLC in the future, which would indicate that the game is actually not the story based campaign game everyone thought, but a live service game.
Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League will be releasing on 2023 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.
