The Truth About Suicide Squad : Kill The Justice League - How Gaming Legends Failed 

Barring more insane behind the scenes info coming out, this is probably the last we will talk about this game for a while. It appears that WB is also scaling back the support for the game, so who knows if remaining seasonal content will even launch. If you enjoy and want to support this channel, you can use our Fortnite code - DJAY123 or you can use that same code for 10% off your first order at our store, cosmobunny.shop ! Appreciate all of you!

No gamers wanted to see their favourite heroes get killed by sub standard characters.

“Either die a hero or you see yourself become the villain” is very accurate right now

Damn I actually thought Sefton left because he didn’t like what his company had become. Turns out he left to avoid the dumpster fire he created, took the best employees with him, and left the others on his sinking ship

- Warner ! NO ! - What ? - Sorry, force of habit. ROCKSTEADY ! NO !

I heard Hill was trying to pick off the popularity of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame by having the heroes die but return later……Except he seems to not understand how the original worked and went in without a plan by making a story that spits on everything about DC.

I tried to apply for a job in the art department for Rocksteady around 2018/19. I never got a reply and thank god, I wasn't involved in this nightmare of a production. Sefton sounds like hell to work for.

I learned today that Suicide Squad have defenders.

I dont understand why they couldnt just make a Justice League game instead of a Suicide Squad game.

If the idea was to capitalize on the movies then why not just make the game more of a tie in for the movies? Instead of putting it in the Arkhamverse. Remember movie tie in games? I remember playing the first Spider-Man movie game when it came out. Then the next two came out and even Amazing Spider-Man got a game. The Ang Lee Hulk had a game. Iron-Man had a game. The Fantastic Four movie got a game. I think the last tie in movie game was the Incredible Hulk. What happened to movie video games?

Yeah I have to agree that this is putting the CoFounders as a "Damn we sunk the ship, lets abandon and build a new one" light.

It's very sad to see Rocksteady fall

I just wanted to see the arkham justic league do cool stuff man...

Honestly this all is just so depressing. The studio that created 3 of the best superhero games arguably ever, had 7 years of development time, hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and a clear view of what the fans wanted, came back with this? It's insane to me, anyone at any point could have said this was a bad idea. Even if you asked anyone post arkham knight " how about a 3rd person looters shooter" I think you'd have a unanimous no, that's a terrible idea.

The biggest plot twist from this article is that Sweet Baby Inc wasn't responsible for all the worst parts of the game. Sweet Baby is still a problem, but it's shocking to learn that everything we thought was theirs, just wasn't.

Sounds a lot like what happend with red fall

yeah this game was doomed from the very start to its ending in my opinion.

Sounds like rocksteadys safest bet is to go back to the Arkham verse. Maybe we will get that Batman beyond game now..

The Funny thing about this is that it united us that this “Game” is a Complete Joke and Disaster, if this Game wasn’t a Live Service Shooter it would be fine but instead we got a Failure.

I genuinely wonder, why exactly are they putting so much time, effort and *money* into something fans don’t want? Isn’t the best way to secure financial success to deliver on what is actually in demand? They could’ve easily put out 2 Arkham games with the same formula as the previous ones since 2015, and people would’ve bought them without question.

Sefton hill ruined rocksteady itself then abandoned ship

What i'm more surprised about is how the higher ups greenlit the pitching for this game. Maybe whoever pitched this game (i don't know if pitches are made only by the studio CEO) left out the plot point where you kill characters that are loved by millions of people? (especially Arkham Batman in the gaming scenario). That plot point alone hurts your potential customers "pool" so much, the game would need to be stellar to counter that major blunder and we all know how it turned out in the end.

This game's failure serves them right, then. Shame on them for being shameless and greedy and forgo quality for pushing out crap qualities. This kind of production formula needs to end.

In my opinion, the only way the Arkham series can survive (especially post-Knight in the timeline) is if Rocksteady make an Arkham 5 and retcon SSKTJL to hell and back.

Making this game apart of arkhamverse was big mistake if it was its own world nobody woudldve bothered but some people grew up playing these games and maybe played them when they was struggling in life or with parents thats why it sucks seeing your favorite character get killed like nothing

I’ve been an SSKJL hater since day 1. I thought this was some new management team ruining it but, nope. Sefton Hill and Walker were just really high or something

I will never forgive this game and game studio for utterly disrespecting Kevin Conroy for his last performance. We could have gotten Batman Beyond, but no. We got this garbage.

Sorry but I don’t believe this article. I don’t believe it’s Seftons fault

I always found it weird that all the blame was always shoved onto WB. The leadership always has something to do with issues like this. There is no studio where the publisher or father company makes ALL the creative decisions.

Haven’t watched the video yet but I wanted to ask you Jay if you had heard about employees at rocksteady talking about making a new dc character game. Would that be something you’re interested in? Or you think it’s too soon. With rocksteady making some questionable choices lately.

Its crazy to think that rocksteady was trying to capitolize on the 2016 Suicide squad movie. Its now 2024. Almost 10 years later and they put out a crappy game. Lol

Why am I hearing dancing fruits in the background, can't escape.

What’s the first background song in this video?

Definitely feel better about not being able to afford a PS5

*Wokecide Squad exists* Normal Gamers: For this is how it happened... This is how Rocksteady died.

Glad I came across this video. I have seen a lot of "gaming channels" that cast aspersions, lay blame, and point fingers at one group or another for the reason why the game failed (usually involving a lot of the content creators's ideology/political beliefs), but I feel like this explained it in a nuanced, objective way, that shows the complexities and troubled history during the development of this game, that undoubtedly was also a major factor in the downfall of Suicide Squad: KTJL

As a side note. After playing through it. You know what did the villains are in charge now story better than this game. Lego DC super villains.

The director had no idea what he was doing??? I couldn’t tell

hi Jay

The stuff about Sefton does make me a little more wary of Hundred Star Games. On the one hand, I do think a lot of the flaws with KTJA stem from it not really being a genre Rocksteady was familiar with, but at the same time people at the top weren’t really trying to familiarize themselves with the genre to make a successful product.

Yo man I bought some coasters from cosmobunny and I LOVE THEM! I needed them and use them daily in my specific places. His wife is super nice! I love this channel and wanted to support them. I may pick up a tray or another coaster! So awesome! ❤ I love your takes bro. You point out the obvious glaring issues that we all see without getting too political

Makes sense when you see how long it been in development that Sefton leasing was moreso him escaping the fire he started. Crazy to see its not just executives but their creative director was not just chasing the live-service format, but seemingly out of ignorance too for those games, why new hires were leaving, and the failure of Avengers. Trust the simple answer of ignorance & stupidity to be why we got a game no-one wanted.

I agree, my problem isn't that they got killed off, it's that they were killed off disrespectfully. Green Lantern was left in his underwear, flash was about to get peed on, and Batman was made a joke. Overall it could've been handled way better, I get that the entire point of the game is to kill the JL but they didn't have to do it so half baked.

A lot of people are blaming WB for this but the real blame should be on Rocksteady. I was a game developer in the 90s so unless the industry has changed that much, this is how we used to do things. 1. Game company comes up with an alpha prototype and we pitch this to several publishers like WB. There were dozens of publishers back in the 90s but sadly the options now are limited. Regardless, we then choose the publisher that is most in line with our vision for the game. 2. Publisher write us a check and “buys” the rights of our game. Their producer will be embedded within our team to ensure we meet milestones. There would be changes and revisions of the game like cutting out content to meet deadlines but the core game is still our vision. 3. Publishers work with hardware companies to print games. In our case, it was for the PS1 so we had to include 3D in our game because Sony required it in all their games even if it was a pre-rendered intro. So unless they changed the procedure of game development in the past 20 years, Rocksteady pitched the Suicide Squad as this looter shooter, WB may ask to make it woke, Sony may ask to release it at a certain date. This is just an example and may not be exactly what happened but it is cleared that Rocksteady idea, the game went through development hell, and the owners left to avoid the negative press because they can say “we left before it was complete”. If anything, it seems WB had to step in to get the game done just to recoup any money lost from their investment. Again, I do not know what happened but from my experience, this falls in line with industry standards.

The thing is they could have made a game like Gotham knights as a direct sequel to arkham knight with arkham gameplay and kept that game alive by just adding new missions every couple months and new costumes and characters to play and it would have worked out for them

I think I already mentioned this on another video but one of the gamers that I'm subscribed to on RU-vid Joshscorcher, does a yearly countdown of video game fails/controversies. I think it would be safe to say that this game and it's production history will be on the list, it probably already was going to be on the list but this latest information will confirm its placement on the list. There were no winners in this situation, the team behind this game spent years working on one of the most hated games of the year, gamers got a hyped up DC Comics game that for a lot of them tainted the Arkham franchise, fans of Kevin Conroy's Batman had to watch their favourite version of the character die an undignified way and now Rocksteady is another victim of a toxic work environment (although this is the first positive toxic environment that I've heard of).

14:37 Why did bro say fortnite like that lmao

The thing that kills me is that at the end of the day, they know this game flopped HARD ($200mil is not a small amount of money) and yet WB is still determined to stick with this live service format. People don't want to buy half-baked games at full price, then have to keep paying out for addition content every few months. Just make and put out full, complete games like they used to. Consumers are telling you what they want, but these companies just keep putting their fingers in their ears and asserting they know what's best. It's beyond moronic and will continue to lose them money.

Honestly at this point when it comes to this game nothing surprises me

I kind of hope that down the line they decide to take this out of the Arkham universe and maybe down the line get a better suicide squad game or a Red Hood game or maybe a game that involves telling us what Batman was doing with the scarecrow gas. And it's also sad that this is the last game that Kevin Conroy ever got to do for us.

This game could have been amazing of they just stuck with the arkham style gameplay but with suicide squad characters. Also dumb of them for this to take place in the arkham universe.

I'm never buying another Rocksteady game. Sweet Baby Inc sucks.

Hear me out if this game was instead in the Arkham origins world would it be easier for player to get behind?

Before casting judgement, I definitely want to hear Sefton Hill's side of the story, because while I don't doubt he had a hand in the overall failure of the game, I hold out hope that his name is just being used as a scapegoat

The titular justice league you kill are just clones

Sounds like they wanted to make a Far Cry live service. But forgot the fun part of that equation.

What I am about to say is feels kinda like copium, but it feels as if the co-founders were so full of WB bullshit, they intentionally encouraged and downright forced it on their staff, in order to make Suicide Squad kill the Rocksteady as big a failure as it could be. It's as if they wanted to publicly discredit their studio for what it was forced to do. Take the vehicle system for instance. There's no way the guy that doubled down on it for Arkham Knight gave the aloof answer of "Oh fck it, let's scrap this cause we have cool transportation". There's also no rational reason to change from melee combat to guns. The way I see it, Black Widown from The Avengers was a melee character that could also have guns, and yet she had a normal 4 slot inventory. I guess what I am trying to say is that it look as if they intentionally shot themselves on the foot, time and time again, with a bigger gun each time.

Degenerateplays has funny commentary as he and Nate game 🎮 👍👍

2:09 We knew all this years ago but the original suicide squad game got cancelled before being repurposed. Then a Damian Wayne Arkham game was in development then moved to the team who made Gotham knights but if you look at the art of Damian Wayne game it’s same as Gotham knights

And I'm sure sweet baby inc were absolute darlings to work with

Im still curious about this game

You might no care that they cheaply race swapped deadshot but i do especially when they were other awesome black characters they couldve included like blood shot or bronze tiger.

So sad that it was Rocksteady OGs that led to this failure

Safe to say that this project that was punted out by Rocksteady & WB Games is a mess no matter how you slice it. Not exactly worth purchasing on a deep sale or gotten via "The Seven Seas".

I don’t think there’s much politics at all in this game just chasing trends lol. Harley’s changes are basically all aesthetics, besides her “dumped joker” attitude she’s basically unchanged. Ask most Batman fans and they’ll tell you Harley isn’t very well represented in the Arkham games due to poor writing. Deadshot is just changes for brand synergy. They casted will smith after they already made a white deadshot. Whoops just retcon it lol. Yeah it doesn’t make much sense but it’s really not a big deal. Evil Superman is just chasing injustice/snyder/etc. cause ppl that don’t know how to write Superman just make him mind controlled or something so they don’t have to put in the effort of writing a good story

I really wanted this game to do well. Say what you will about the story or the repetitiveness, but I thought the core gameplay concept was fun. They just needed more story and better ideas to change things up.

Honestly, hearing about the behind the scenes drama, I'm worried about 100 Star Games, and if will just end up like this again. You have to wonder why on Earth Sefton Hill would agree to head a project that would eventually ruin the games that he created in the first place. It is a shame, but it feels like this is a trend for the things we love: it is only a matter of time until they are co-oped by people who hate the fans and are horrifically out of touch.

Makes me wonder what would have been if they had made that Superman game they supposedly originally wanted to make. This level of failure originating from the studio itself without much room to blame corporate mandates or 3rd party consultants basically guarantees there won't be another S. Squad game anytime soon. Honestly I'm a little relieved this happened to characters I don't care as much about and not the League.

I'll never understand why they didn't just set the game in a DIFFERENT universe. Then it would make sense for why Harley doesnt act like how she did in the Arkham trilogy, or why Deadshot is black, or why this game has a Justice League when the trilogy NEVER acknowledges the existence of a league, or why Batman is a public figure despite dying/faking his death at the end of Arkham Knight. Hell, you could even have the Arkhamverse be the focus of one of the game's seasons. Have the characters visit the real arkhamverse, show us how things turned out after the events of Arkham Knight, introduce that universe's characters like Nightwing, Robin, Red Hood, and Azrael, etc. Red Hood already uses guns so he would fit right in as a playable character. It would have been a legitimately cool idea for a season But no, they retroactively rewrote the arkhamverse's canon in a clunky, lazy way.

Nah bro WB is lying just look at their other games like mk1

Mgsv is a good example. Damn I wish that game had more implementation to it like a more fun open world with difficult enemy types and boss fights. Anyways I really wish mgsv gets a remake so that we can get a definitive version from it. Games amazing don’t get me wrong.

The only silver lining is now people don't fall for that live service shit.

100 Star Games Studio will never get a cent from me, the same with Rocksteady. I don’t plan on purchasing anything from them again. They made my childhood and then destroyed it with one gun shot.

I'd still like to play through the story, but I'm not paying a dime for it. If it goes free to play, I'll run through it for a bit, if it doesn't, I'll just never play it. I've never been so happy to see a game fail as I was with Suicide Squad. I hope every live service game WB releases fails miserably. Give players the games we want, or watch your games crash and burn.

I'm in the very small minority that enjoyed the story. I liked it because knowing that there was more content coming, that the story wasn't over. I could see that the JL members were clones, and was looking forward to seeing the real heroes return, and the impact that would have on the Squad members. Then season 1 came out. If there's any point at which you can tell the behind the scenes drama was taking a toll, it was the first episode of season 1. There is no redemption for this game, and I find that disappointing. Instead of sticking to the road map they had envisioned, they just need to release it all at once. That won't happen, and the fact that it's reliant on the servers staying on means this game is cooked.

So all the stuff about the old Rocksteady developers leaving turned out to not be true. None of the stuff about WB forcing Rocksteady to make is true. Not even SBI writing all the stuff fans hate is true. And people wonder why gamers have the reputation we have. People shoved their political ideology into analyzing why this game failed. It has been a good way to test who has actual opinions and who’s just jumping on hate bandwagons. Luke Stephens and Jay have had the best coverage on this game. You guys didn’t like the game but at least had something interesting to say and offer a unique perspectives. Way too many culture warriors were just worried about complaining about “woke”. Good job man respect.

Saying Jason Schreier breaks stories is like saying Fox News covers the news. Sure... but he did work for Kotaku, and applying skepticism to the lens that may be applied is better than not.

It was an uphill battle from conception. Both in story and gameplay. You gotta have a really good story to sell me on playing a live service shooter game, & they sadly couldn't deliver. The game failed as a story & as a continuation of an established beloved franchise, so the morale for players to get engaged with the gameplay was lost.

Like the saying goes, there are two sides to every story. Maybe these guys are responsible for some of the flubs, but it is easy to blame the guys who left the company for all the problems in your very crappy game.

I still don't get why tf Warner pushes the Suicide Squad and the Joker so much in almost every media they can... but the main DC heroes beloved for decades are treated like shit, except for WW cus you know strong and flawless female character

I will say not the same company as before literally there’s like one og guy and he works on the music

I genuinely don't care either way, but this is smelling (at least to me) like WB doing damage control by blaming it all on the guy who left the developers. I've been in the corporate world long enough to know that it's "never our fault".

Suicide Squad is a comedy of errors. They could reveal that the whole thing took place on Earth 2, or Earth 404, that it was never our Batman to begin with let alone some clone of him, and still have to contend with the fact that the actual gameplay loop doesn't appeal to the same group of people as the Arkham games. It would still only cover a tiny fraction of the JL's lineup. You'd still have to contend with Brainiac being a rehash of the Flash fight. The Joker would still be a hilarious fumble. At least the laundry list of problems I had with Arkham Knight didn't ultimately drag the whole game down with it; _this_ affair gives the apperance of a studio with a nigh-pristine reputation going full seppuku.

This whole thing was the opposite of a balling display 🏀

First of all…..you have the music of them dancing fruits as your background song🤦🏽‍♂️don’t ask me how I know. I have a daughter.

So if it don’t go past season 4 I want refund I paid 70 bucks for this game 😅 and I better get more then 4 seasons 😅

Oh the studio made mistakes BUT in the end the studio is to blame All the usual

Sounds like self sabotage by Rockstready. They spat at the legacy the built with Arkhamverse

The entire game industry sucks arse

Online games have basically ruined the gaming industry! The thing that annoys me with online gaming is, they will eventually be shut down. Look at the Xbox 360 for example. It had some amazing online games, which I won't be able to play again. I remember when I got Max Payne 3, a few months after it was released. Some of the game modes already felt dead. And then it got progressively worse over the years. The online gameplay was amazing though. But just looking back at my experience playing online games on the 360, and a lesser experience on the PS4, I just wondering if I wasted all that time and money playing on something that will eventually be shut down

Mr Hill is a perfectionist and that is what they could not handle , do they know why we used to buys their games ?

They should of never made it in the Arkham universe

Warner sucks and I'm all here for the hate that they earn

I simply refuse to acknowledge this joke of a game’s existence

I gotta say thanks for being a normal person and not doing all "anti woke" and whatever because of Deadshot and sweet baby inc. I hate seeing actual criticism deflected because people see minorites and see diversity as the problem rather than bad writing. Like you said, its dumb that deadshot is different but not BECAUASE of him being black, just poor writing. Being a nerdy Gay its hard to find channels that give fair criticism without being bigots. Thank you for being normal

Peaked at arkham city. 🤕🤕

I don’t want to take this to some sort of conspiracy theory. But gaming hasn’t been the same since Last of Us 2 won game of the year. The reason for that is because Anita Sarkeisain worked on Naughty Dog as consultant similar to Sweet Baby Inc.

00:45 he shares their politics, and hes a known entity so they can trust him to keep his sources confidential

I don’t know what everyone so surprised by that this game didn’t make the cut like everyone at the studio believed. I mean the answer was right there you know it’s self that certain live service games just don’t survive for a long with constant maintenance and updates to a live service program. I mean OK granted you’re trying to capitalize on the suicide squad film that was under James Gunn‘s direction and that’s fine, but when you have a bunch of “Not so friendly writers” that don’t understand the source material or where these characters come from and suddenly you change all their personalities that are based off of your creations of this universe a.k.a. the Arkhamverse then it becomes a giant mess. For example you have a where Harley Quinn is rejecting everything that she was and suddenly hit on a kid version of her best friend poison ivy, next is a deadshot that is from another universe that’s never explain on how he came to this world, then of course you have superman who’s like the most incompetent hero of all time in this world, followed by wonder woman who’s like not exactly her prime self and the final insult was captain boomerang where he desecrates the clone body of the flash. Plus it’s also never a good sign when the co-creators of the Arkham franchise alongside half of their staff suddenly decide to leave and leave this game to suddenly burn.

Failing is all too easy for those who take their customers for granted. We aren't just blind consumers relying on game magazines like the old days, we're educated customers with a whole slew of reliable sources for in-depth reviews, and corpos like WB ultimately have to decide whether or not our patronage is something they genuinely want. The "modern audience" these corpos envision just doesn't exist, and they need to admit that. You either make something for the target demographic you've built over the years, or that product you've made will end up having no audience for it, period.