In what can only be described as the historically unpopular game giving one last middle finger to the world before its demise, the recent decision by Warner Bros. Games to sunset Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has led to a round of layoffs at their Montréal support studio.
Captain Boomerang (Daniel Lapaine) has a message for his arch-enemy in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024), Rocksteady Studios
As previously reported, December 9th saw developer Rocksteady Studios inform players that following the upcoming conclusion of the game’s Season 4 and addition of Deathstroke to the titular team’s playable roster, they would no longer be producing any new Suicide Squad content.
“With Deathstroke joining the roster, the Suicide Squad’s crusade against Brainiac is drawing to an end,” wrote the developers in an official blog post. “Season 4 will finish up with Episode 8, which is scheduled to release in January 2025, and that will serve as the last seasonal Episode for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.”
Deathstoke’s (TBA) stands victorious over Braniac (Jason Isaacs) in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024), Rocksteady Studios
But far from just an end to the game’s live-service lifespan, this announcement also brought with it a round of job cuts at WB Games Montréal, whose team had provided various development and support work to the Arkham video game universe’s latest entry.
As first reported by Stéphanie Dupuis for French-language Canadian news outlet Radio-Canada, on the same day as Rocksteady’s broke the above news, WB Games undertook “the elimination of 99 jobs” from the support studio – who readers may best remember as the developers behind the previous and similarly-Batman-themed-live-service title Gotham Knights.
Per the outlet’s sources, these layoffs primarily affected those employees working for Keyword, a WB Games subcontractor “responsible for quality assurance of video games”.
Braniac (Jason Isaacs) meets his end at Deathstoke’s (TBA) blade in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024), Rocksteady Studios
“Staff were invited to a video conference meeting on Monday morning, during which WB Games Montréal announced that it did not have enough projects to provide them with work,” explained the outlet, relaying information provided to them by an unidentified employee.
“We were offered two choices,” recalled one such employee. “Talk to a counselor to find a new job, or put our name on a callback list for when there’s work for us. But this second option could only happen in 2026.”
To this end, Dupuis notes that affected employees “will have to leave the offices in eight weeks”.
“What are we, some kind of Suicide Squad?” in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024), Rocksteady Games
Interestingly, it appears the twin decisions to shutter Suicide Squad and cut WB Games Montréal team were made recently, as per report, “At the team’s most recent biannual meeting, at the end of summer, there was no indication of possible job cuts.”
“On the contrary,” they recounted from a source, “the studio emphasized that there would be enough projects to work on.”
And in confirming that Suicide Squad‘s failure did in fact play a part in these layoffs, one now-former employee specifically cited the fact that the game “was in development for so long, and launched with a lot of problems” as a reason for his recent firing.
“Players were disappointed,” he admitted. “WB Games should have pulled the plug on the game.”
Superman (Nolan North) is ready to serve his master in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024), Rocksteady Studios
The final, orange-and-black tinted chapter of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League‘s story is currently slated to drop on January 14th, 2025.