Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has a release date for Season 1 and the arrival of Joker as a playable character: March 28.
As already announced, Rocksteady won’t release a patch for Suicide Squad this week in order to focus on getting the game ready for the launch of Season 1 later in March.
Season 1 launches just under two months after Rocksteady’s embattled live-service looter shooter came out, and just two weeks after Rocksteady parent company Warner Bros. Discovery admitted Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League “has fallen short of our expectations”.
Speaking during a financial call, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Financial Officer, Gunnar Wiedenfels, said Rocksteady’s $70 game hadn’t done the business the company had hoped for. Warner Bros. Discovery failed to mention a sales figure, but did say Suicide Squad’s failure had set up the company’s game business for a “tough” year-on-year comparison. Last year, Warner Bros. Discovery released Hogwarts Legacy, which went on to become the best-selling game of 2023.
“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,” Wiedenfels said.
The Season 1 release date comes amid low player numbers for Suicide Squad on Steam (player numbers for PS5 and Xbox Series X and S are unavailable). On Steam, the live service action game peaked with 13,459 concurrent players, a figure that has plummeted since launch. At the time of this article’s publication, just 203 people were playing the game on Valve’s platform with a 24-hour peak of 497, according to SteamDB.
Tough questions are now being asked about the future of Suicide Squad. Ahead of launch, Rocksteady committed to four seasons of support, each of which adding a new playable character as well as new environments, loot, and activities. Clearly, Season 1 will launch, but what happens after that? IGN has reported on how a Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League player had unearthed a hidden message that looked like a strong hint at the return of Batman. Datamining has shown strong hints that Flash and Green Lantern are set to return in some form. Other playable characters suspected to be on their way include Mrs Freeze (Nora Fries), Lawless, and Deathstroke.
Meanwhile, Rocksteady said the Epic Games Store version of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will now release on March 26, 2024 in what amounts to the second delay of the game on Epic’s platform. “To our Epic Games Store PC community, thank you for your patience,” the developer said.
IGN’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League review returned a 5/10. We called it “a repetitive and bland looter-shooter that, despite an engaging story, never stays fun for long enough.”
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
