2024 hasn’t been a good year for a lot of people. We’re not even talking about just the gaming industry. We’re talking about people around the world. At times, it seemed like one bad thing after another happened, and it’s not stopping any time soon. In the gaming industry, many developers and publishers have been hit with certain losses that have caused layoffs, shutdowns, and, of course, terrible games to be released. WB Games is one of many publishers who felt that they had the “key to victory” with two titles that would surely “rake in the money.” However, it cost them $300 million in revenue instead. Oops.
You should know the story by now, as we’ve technically talked about it before. Most recently, David Zaslav revealed in a financial briefing that Multiversus, the company’s big fighting game featuring numerous Warner Bros characters, had such an “underperforming” time since launch that it cost the company $100 million.
Then, when you go back to February, the “highly-anticipated” launch of Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League went so poorly that the company had to reduce potential profits by $200 million, as that’s what they thought the game would get them, but it wasn’t even close to that. So, when you combine those two failures together, that’s $300 million in lost revenue, which would bankrupt most companies.
Granted, WB Games isn’t most companies, as they are under the umbrella of one of the biggest media corporations in the world. Zaslav himself has said that the brand would “refocus” to try and become something better by making titles based on four hit IP, one of which is Batman.
The irony is that the game featuring the Suicide Squad also had Batman and the Justice League in it, as did the company’s fighting game.
The issue here is that Zaslav and others in charge thought that they could publish live-service games and “rake in the money” because that’s “what gamers play right now.” Except, it isn’t. The live-service model is highly volatile, and numerous games have failed, underperformed, or just plain languished within it until they were put out of their misery.
If Warner Bros wants to make its gaming arm profitable in the future, they need to focus on quality single-player or dedicated multiplayer non-live-service titles to lure players back in. If they don’t do that, they’ll be right back in this position again, and once more, they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.
