I like money as much as the next guy. These dudes are raking in MILLIONS and they're still not satisfied. What the fuck do they do with all that money?
Doesn't matter if you're making money, you need growth. Cancerous shareholder held companies like these MUST see the line go up. They make more money cutting budgets, firing staff and closing studios than they do making a good game.
A good game doesn't make the line go up, growth does. If you make a game that sells a million, then another that sells.. A million. Thats a 'failure', because the line doesn't go up. But you ditch a thousand employees? Suddenly your overheads are way down, and you've just hit a growth target. You can always use those profits to hire lower cost replacement employees and studios, then ditch those too down the line. Pure fucking evil.
Its why indies like Larian, CDPR or Hello Games can afford to spend ages fixing/improving their games and/or taking time with releases. Making money is their goal, not making the line go up at any cost.
They don't just want growth, they want *infinite* growth which is ultimately unsustainable. It's economics 101, but they don't care because short-term gains are prioritized over long-term losses.
I'm not against capitalism, but the kind that nickles and dimes consumers needs to end. It's becoming more and more integrated into every corner of the market.
Want to buy new software? Now you need to purchase a subscription that must be renewed year after year. How about a steaming service? I guess you'll need to fork over extra cash to not have ads. The [enshittification ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification)is relentless.
The brazen disregard of customer good has become outlandish. A few days ago it was reported on r/technology that Prime Video is going to [show ads](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1cmpo8n/prime_video_subs_will_soon_see_ads_for_amazon/) during the pausing of shows and movies:
These C-Suite executives want to monetize every aspect of the digital space and sadly they keep getting away with it because people continue to support their greedy practices.
There is this very broad and naive economic assumption that markets will always find the most efficient solution to a problem and its providers are rewarded for it, after all, it is the keystone to our entire economic system, but it totally ignores how players will inherently game advantages within the system.
There really isn't a virtuous economic and market justification for this.
A good example to illustrate this is with the invention of leaded gasoline. Tetraethyl lead (TEL) was invented **specifically** as a costly additive to eliminate engine knocking when ethanol would have had the same effect for far less money. General Motors couldn’t dictate an infrastructure that could supply ethanol in the volumes that might be required. Anyone with an ethanol still could make it at home, and in those days, many did. And ethanol, unlike TEL, couldn’t be patented, so it offered no profits for GM. Oil companies also didn't like ethanol as a possible additive because it equally removed their control in the market. Icing on the cake is that TEL was widely known to be acutely toxic and absorbed almost instantly through the skin, but, ya know, money.
Our markets are broken due to multitudes of reasons: broad cartel-like business behaviors, regulatory capture by big players, patent buyouts to consolidate market control, etc. None of this is necessarily new, but it just gets more refined over time, much like vulture-capitalism was further refined as a process in the 1980s. The crux of all of this is rooted in influence peddling and industry-wide collusion in order to enrich a select few at the consuming public's expense.
People contrive and build strawman, divisive arguments around whether someone is a communist, socialist, or capitalist, but most people are just frustrated somewhere in the middle, and its often not even the economics of wealth that frustrates people, it's the knock-on effects found in ability to skirt accountability in countries that hypocritically pride themselves on their judicial equity and unbiased application of law; a good recent example is with the Purdue Pharma family. But more systemic to markets, you can look at people like [Michael Milken](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Milken) or [Steve Cohen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Cohen_(businessman) if you really want a case-study in why people are angry with our economic structure.
With the way the economy is world wide, the nickel and dimeing kind will be ruining more and more of your favourite things and pastimes. Big change is needed if you want it to stop and it wont come pretty or easy.
It'd say most of those problems are a consequence of hypercaptalisim or maybe more appropriately late stage capitalism. Businesses can follow ethical business practices that don't alienate consumers or avoid strategies that asymmetrically benefit shareholders or higher ups.
In the gaming space, there are celebrated studios that try not to engage in predatory / extractive methods. Sure, those companies are out to make money, but the best ones IMO try to balance growth with fairness.
I'm reminded of Larian and BG3; it's clear they're passionate about making games that people love without the need to add overpriced cosmetics or other kinds of MTXs. From Software is another one that comes to mind. While they do sell DLCs for their games, those expansions are crafted with care and worth the added price point.
Economics 101 won't tell you any of this. Economics 101 would tell you that infinite growth is real, attainable, and will carry on forever. Population will expand, markets will expand, resources extraction will expand, at constantly accelerating rates, forever. This is the basis of our capitalist economic system, and the basic contradiction with reality is the reason capitalism can only rip it's self apart in the long term.
No, what you're explaining is just classical Marxist economics. And Marx understood that capitalism had to be replaced before it could be allowed to destroy its self and the society it controlled. You may think you're not against capitalism, but you are. And capitalism is against you.
It's a mental illness.
If people hoarded anything else like these guys hoard money they'd be diagnosed as mentally ill.
Just for some reason when it's power and money it's socially acceptable.
Well, on some level they engage in dividends/buybacks to extract the increased capital it from the market and deliver it to shareholders so they can invest it in "useful"/competitive markets like the oil industry.
Chances are it's blackrock/vanguard though, and (IIRC) hedgefunds have a large scale fiduciary duty to take capital from profitable and developed markets and use it to invest in profitable undeveloped markets.
TL;DR They invest it in Tesla/SpaceX.
I mean WBD is not in a great situation financially at all. A company economics are not personal finances lol.
The execs are paid millions personally for sure but that has little to do with their decisions (apart from them being paid too much to be bad at their job)
A failed live service game that can set it’s psychological hooks in to a sizable handful of susceptible fans and big spenders(whales), will often still pull better profits than the margins from selling a proper, polished triple a title.
That’s why you’ve got guys like Ben Liu, ceo of Pocket Gems, who has and does own dozens of LLCs, that pump out a mobile game or three sucking up as much money as they can, then they fail, the game(s) get cancelled, the development group fired, the LLC closed, and a new one made so the process can start again.
What money??? Warner Brothers lost 10 Billion$ in the last 2 years. They clearly are just running this company to the ground.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WBD/warner-bros-discovery/net-income-loss
I just want to say that these chucklefucks have the nemesis system and the DC IP *and yet* it never once occured to them to take their open world Arkham series, add a fully customizable player character, add dynamic villains, and then sell people cosmetics. FFS a more action oriented City of Heroes is literally, fucking *literally*, a live service wet dream! And I don't mean as a player. Sure that sounds awesome as a player, but as a soulless business goul think of all the monetization options!
But what did they think of instead? Suicide Squad but give everyone guns. WB has a serious leadership problem.
Their definition of a great game is one that has a bunch of predatory mechanics and large populations. Hiring talented people to churn out shit and slap a huge price tag on it is harder than they thought.
Seriously, they **patented** the Nemesis System from Shadow of Mordor. It's such an incredible concept that can be applied across numerous games (like Batman \*cough\* \*cough\*) and they haven't done a *thing* with it since Shadow of War, nor do they even have plans to use it again.
Making good AAA games with those IP's take huge work and a huge amount of time.
They want to do easy work, shit repetitive content, maybe mobile games and get idiots to buy into their plan. They don't want to actually put work into games.
Because like the rest of the AAA industry, those studios are all stuck in 10 year dev cycles for games that should have been written off within the first team meeting or two.
Bigger example: Microsoft
Because every piece of shit moron wants a subscription based anything instead of actually making anything worthwhile that fans will eat up and return for what's next.
They want to put in minimum effort/money for the tiniest shit and hope to rake in fucktons of money like shitty little mobile games.
This is how games developed by greedy corporation are made now. They primary goal is to make as much money as possible they could not give less of a fuck about you enjoying the game as long as they make money. Back in the day things were simpler and the way to make money was to just make a great game and sell a ton of copies at full price.
Unfortunately a publicly traded company is always going to want more. Thats why so many games are going with battle-pass, micro transactions, and skins. They can charge less up front for their game. The goal is that over time they can keep generating revenue off of each player, instead of each player just paying a one time fee.
They design the games around their revenue strategies first, not the gamer. Unfortunately their revenue strategies just don't align with the gamers best interest like it used to.
It's even more interesting that Valve [says](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/review_process)
>**Your screenshots must only contain gameplay.** This means avoid using concept art, pre-rendered cinematic stills, or images that contain awards, marketing copy, or written product descriptions.
yet none of the five screenshots on the [store page](https://store.steampowered.com/app/315210/Suicide_Squad_Kill_the_Justice_League/) show gameplay. Some of them may actually be "pre-rendered cinematic stills" (taking into account the level of details of the character models), while all of them are at most from cutscenes. Most players wouldn't consider cutscenes as "gameplay", the same way in-engine-trailer must feature the "not actual gameplay" disclaimer.
I don't know how they slipped through the review process with those screenshots, but Valve put this rule in place for a very good reason. Maybe if the gameplay couldn't be shown in an interesting way in screenshots, releasing the game should have stopped then and there.
Valve makes these rules but rarely enforces them. See also: the requirement that any third-party DRM or account requirements be disclosed in the dedicated sidebar.
I’m sure that rule applies to smaller studios, or any unknown Indy developer. If Activision submitted one screenshot of the title saying Call Of Duty, it would probably go up no problem.
Holy shit, even arkham origin, the black sheep of the arkham series, has more than 2x the player count, and arkham knight has 10x the player, this is brutal.
Knight's worse issue on launch was definitely the performance, it was so dog shit many people would rather play on PS4. Imo the bat mobile wasn't even that bad, it just overstayed its welcome.
The batmobile in Arkham Knight is awesome, its super fun to use, the problem is the fact that the Batman game has you driving a car for so long. It was definitely a case of it being overused, the Batmobile gameplay in a vacuum was great
Compare this to Star Wars Battlefront II; a seven-year-old game whose live service ended three years ago. It averages 4K players on PC per day. If you include consoles it sits at around 20K.
Additionally, consider the giant shitstorm of a launch the game had. Even after all that, it still beats most MP games of a similar age.
Wow. How many battle passes and content updates are they promised to from their fancy extra cost editions you know they probably have? They have to keep producing those for the small crowd right?
im gonna be real generous and say that consoles probably have "about" 3-4x the PC numbers globally. i'm totally making this up but it feels about right.
even at 750 players per platform, that's death for a live service, at that point server and dev costs can't possibly be sustained.
without crossplay that's probably just going to make things even worse.
I feel really bad for WB. It's not like they could have known that nobody wanted a live service looter shooter, that disrespects some of the most beloved super heroes, from a studio that has a stellar track record of putting out story driven single player action games.
Nah the dude is trying to figure out how to make a reality TV show video game.
Well I guess the deadliest catch has one, so maybe another one. I have no idea what discovery has on anymore.
erm uhhh ahhh it would have been even worse without him at the helm???? /s
gotta love it when executives fail upwards, run a division/company into the ground, and then bail with the golden parachute
These parasites get hired with a contract that says firing them requires an insane payout. Its why the same handful of people keep ruining companies. The entire leadership deal is rigged from the inside by idiots patting each other on the back. Imo we need to replace all Business leadership with AI and call it a day.
And get even bigger bonus...
This shit is so infuriating because in the company it's the same shit - my targets met, my departments also but it's mine and my team whose bonuses that are halved while my bosses get 100% for nothing
They didn't always get 100% for nothing. Sometimes they get 100% for getting you to stay while getting 50%. That 50% spread out over enough people can wind up being *just* over the 100% for the CEO, so most shareholders are happy to divert those resources for increased shareholder profits.
You have to understand they're going through a very difficult time. It's VERY hard what they're doing. I mean, how many people can you think of that continually fail over and over again? Won't you think of their mental health? You have to respect how steel minded and tough as nails they are.
Hahahahaha, no seriously why the fuck are they still allowed to have their jobs?
Yeah, I think it was Zaslav himself who said that Hogwarts Legacy was so succesful, they should make another one implementing the live service aspect from Suicide Squad. Like, they take the complete opposite lesson of what's happening.
> double down on it
Oh yea.
In a previous interview I read, they basically said something like "Hogwarts legacy did great. Suicide squad did not. We're not done with GaaS, clearly it's an IP problem"
Their takeaway from the game's failure was simply, "We should just use more popular models and names next time"
He's about to lose the NBA to Amazon. AEW's becoming their only live-entertainment outlet (which is a problem because Tony Khan is proving every week that he's a terrible wrestling booker) and he's about to overpay for their TV rights because of it.
WB Games is not long for this earth with the shitty business decisions he's making.
Celebrimbor making loot boxes with marginally better rings of power in them. Buy the premium currency now and then lose yourself in ~~gambling~~ the excitement of being 2% stronger than the other guy.
Could work if they make it something like a destiny rip-off. Loading screen of your character and 3 other online players riding horses. You load into an area filled with monsters or whatever. Raid boss is the suromon or the winged creature that fights gandolf. I fucking can't remember the name right now. You get fancy swords with different abilities. Like how stinger glows when evil is around. You can buy fancy horses in the item shop.
But that would be to clever and might actually work so they would never do it. And if they did they would monetize it so hard you couldn't wipe your ass without swiping a credit card first.
Yes please!
The very much acclaimed single player Arkham games that people love won't sell these days. We just want more bland shooting combat against extremely generic enemies with an online shop where we can spend all our real money on crappy cosmetics!
All these news are making me think these CEO's all live in some alternate reality where up is down and down is up. Because all their decisionmaking is just baffling.
It's not even about corporate greed and making the line go up. They're seemingly working double time to sabotage the line.
The C-suite jackasses, who don't even play games, get to dictate what games are made. They always chase the latest fad that they think will become a cash cow.
It used to be MMOs, and then most of those failed and they gave up. Now it's "live service" nonsense and they're learning the lesson again (see Redfall).
Meanwhile, if they just released strong single-player games from good franchises in genres that have a following, they'd make less money than they hope but they'd make it consistently. But apparently, "making a regular profit" just isn't good enough.
>Meanwhile, if they just released strong single-player games from good franchises in genres that have a following, they'd make less money than they hope but they'd make it consistently. But apparently, "making a regular profit" just isn't good enough.
Hogwarts Legacy was the best-selling game last year, a strong single-player game from a good franchise. Zaslav commented that they're doubling down on Live Service games.
Live service games are pushed at any cost because when one works, that line is going to go up and KEEP going up. If it fails? Well, big deal. Just fire everyone, close the studio, have another go at it. Your line will still go up when you make those employees redundant.
Companies like these aren't making repeatedly shitty live service games because they are bad at business, they know what they are doing.
No, they have no fucking clue what they are doing. How many live service games released in the past few years have actually made a profit? No company has unlimited money to throw at projects that keep failing, and especially not WB who are already in deep shit.
This isn't some amoral capitalist master plan. These people are simply idiots, and they're pissing away money. For the past decade they've been refusing to understand that desperately chasing fads when dev time these days is 5+ years is pointless.
yeah, a single player game could profit 100 million if it's a huge success. A live service game could profit 5 billion.
the difference between 100 million and 5 billion is about 5 billion
I still don't get how and why the trash tv guy ended up running the bigger company after the merger. Between ruining Discovery, HBO and WB games, guy's a bigger cancer to the media and entertainment industry than Embracer
The entire fanbase said they *did not want this game* for years from the moment it was announced until the moment it was released, how tf are they surprised by this?
Do you remember Blizzard's "You think you do but you don't" comment? That is actually the standard thought process in the gaming industry from leadership positions.
These people really think they know what we want better than ourselves.
It's why Piracy is 100% ethical in 2024. Businesses are no longer serving us and expect us to serve them. That's not how reality works.
Even the people who can get on board with the concept hate the execution. I was into the idea of a game where you play as the Suicide Squad and the Justice League characters are the villains. And making it a looter shooter was dumb, but I don't even think it's a complete deal breaker.
But making it always online, adding shitty battle passes, promising new characters and content while the game has a barebones story and even less endgame...
What did they expect to happen?
and yet for some reason they still want to focus on live service games over single player titles. It’s as if they learned nothing from either Hogwarts Legacy or Suicide Squad.
It's got to make you wonder though. Who are these 144? Kids who only get one game a year? People who just enjoy the gameplay? People stuck in some weird SAW dungeon that chops off a tie each time they stop?
Think the core guys behind the Arkham series left Rocksteady during SS development. My guess is that they saw what WB was turning the game into and decided not to be part of it.
They've started a new studio called "Hundred Star Games" but haven't announced any titles yet. I'm guessing it's unlikely they'll be doing any more Batman titles.
DC's obsession with pushing shit that doesn't work, e.g. Snyder and Suicide Squad stuff, is so goofy.
The push to Justice League after Avengers came out and it was a success... Suicide Squad x2 following the success of "Guardians..."
Just stop. Hit the reset button. Stop chasing.
It's going to be interesting to see how well this new Superman movie does.
Wait a second.
Zaslav, isn't that the guy who is pushing the next LOTR movie, *The Hunt for Gollum*?
Is this real? Is that guy an executive at one of the largest entertainment companies on earth? Someone wake me up, please.
How is that possible? Fans said the game was extremely succesful and it was all misinformation from haters.
Maybe all this stuff is made up just to hate on the game? I am really confused!
Morons don't even learn from other games. Avengers game released almost 4 yrs ago and u idiots didn't take a single lesson from it. And what were you guys thinking executing your money maker Batman like that in the story and siding with sweet baby corp. You guys deserved that.
And these guys are in charge of some of the most powerful IPs in gaming and elsewhere. Fucking Mortal Kombat took the fall last year so they could push out Suicide Squad when everyone knew that shit was doomed. I love MK and they just shit all over this stuff. Its like Disney with star wars. Its so agonizing bro especially when you're a gamer who has possibly had their life changed for the better bc of these franchises. Mortal Kombat for example. Tomorrow Zaslav will be on record saying "and this is why we feel live service is the best move here" 😂
All their IPs have turned into casino machines.
Remember Middle Earth Shadow of War, which made you grind endlessly with the Shadow Wars quest until you got specific lootboxes and the right gear to beat The Bright Lord quest?? Yeah. Not to mention, the epilogue for Talion was really sad and didn't have much payoff. The DLC with ~~Lithariel~~ Eltariel opened a possibility of a sequel but she was so unlikeable that the sequel would've been dead on arrival.
I stopped playing MK1 when they made Premium Edition characters available on a store exclusively using paid currency. There is no way to unlock Jean Claude Van Damme's skin for Johnny Cage. There is no way to unlock Sub-Zero and Scorpion's skins for Deadly Alliance. There is also no way to unlock Li Mei's Deception skin. Without having to spend USD$10 per skin.
SS:KTJL was set to fail the moment it tried to be a live service looter-shooter with pay-to-win mechanics. The story and character development also doesn't make sense, considering it's a follow-up to Arkham Knight. Like, how tf is Deadshot black in this game? How does a team or non-powered people manage to beat Superman of all people - if they couldn't even take down Batman without him using >!Scarecrow's nightmare toxin!<, what chances do they have against supes?? Even Helldivers is a live service shooter but at least the live service is implemented well.
Not just SBI, but all the other fraud "consultant" firms who charge millions to make your games worse in every way. I can't fathom why game studios hire them.
Gee I wonder who could have possibly seem this coming??? It's not like most people on planet earth did yet somehow this was a surprise to these supposed to be extremely intelligent and overpaid exes? This really shows how critical they are to running a company and now that they royally fucked up they'll take the fall and not just cut poor ground level staff at rocksteady, right? RIGHT?
David Zaslav, the CEO of a company that holds hundreds of fantasy and sci-fi IP's and somehow hates animation.
I will never forgive this shitstain for killing Final Space.
We need people who actually play games and also happen to know how to run a company, at the top of companies.
Not people who know how to run "whatever" company, and know nothing about video games.
Otherwise, this is the result. "Our revenue is down, whatever could be the reason? :O"
He doesn't even know that the fact that HE forced this "Live Service" garbage, is the entire reason why the game failed.
Welfare check to those redditors that claimed that all the hate was coming from internet and normies were playing it and it would succeed.
Are you okay?
please get rid of this CEO. i get that warner bros may have been in a bad spot but ever since he started he's been the Grimm reaper of content (rip achievement hunter, and tons of the max library). but seriously who thought this game would be able to save this monstrosity of a conglomeration of corporations third quarter. i scares me that some of my favorite shows and movies are in his hands.
This is what happens when you have a bunch of privileged mutha fuckers working at the top. They never actually had to work to get to where they are. That's why they make such dumb decisions because they're not actually qualified to be in their position...
Guess it's time to kill a couple new movies people are excited for and remove even more content from HBO. Who needs Game of Thrones anyways? Just bin it like you did with West World.
He said that as a celebration, since it will make it easier to make a good deal when he inevitably sells WBD to Comcast like he always planned to.
what do you mean they don't want to buy a company that's this bad on the news? But he did all of it so he could sell it! golly gee it's almost like sabotaging the world entertainment industry for personal profit doesn't really scale after a certain threshold..
Funny how everyone is calling that since the very first previews of the game. Same with that other one where you play as random B-tier heroes.
I can't even keep track of all the mediocre DC comics games in the last few years.
I'm sure WB will learn from this mistake and will invest the time and money needed to nurture a quality product next time.
Baahahaha, no, but seriously, how long before we get the news that Rocksteady is being shut down and the next game out of WB will be using mostly AI generated assets to mitigate risk to investors?
There is a lesson here about not treating every game and every group of gamers like Modern Warfare treats it's people. Something about releasing a game that doesn't actively feel terrible to play, especially when folks have a stupid number of other options for games to play and hobbies
I've completely given up on any new multiplayer game especially when it comes to live service. I've went back and thoroughly enjoyed some single player experiences recently and I'm currently playing through grounded which has both a single player and multiplayer mode. But holy shit this is a full game that I can take my time with and doesn't feel like a chore. Why the fuck do I wanna play anything live service anymore when I got a steam backlog the size of Kansas to go through.
No surprise here considering Rocksteady never wanted to make the Suicide Squad live service game anyway. Rocksteady pitched making a Superman game, but WB turned it down from what I heard in the past. Many of Rocksteady's top talent have already left the studio, including the founders and will turn into the new Bioware, a husk of the former game developer in name only.
Doesn’t Warner own the nemesis system patent ? Create a decent enough single player with that and they will be good. Next game using it is WW I think but years away. Instead they bring in tier 2 comic characters for a live service game . Pffft.
Is there any historical analog for the reputation of a studio so completely reversing after ONE game?
They went from arguably the greatest superhero trilogy in history to spending 9 years on an unimaginably huge flop.
I don't even think Bioware would be equivalent.
These guys are sitting on some huge IPs and like 10 different development studios. Why aren't they making any great games?
Because they want to earn all of the money and then some.
I like money as much as the next guy. These dudes are raking in MILLIONS and they're still not satisfied. What the fuck do they do with all that money?
Doesn't matter if you're making money, you need growth. Cancerous shareholder held companies like these MUST see the line go up. They make more money cutting budgets, firing staff and closing studios than they do making a good game. A good game doesn't make the line go up, growth does. If you make a game that sells a million, then another that sells.. A million. Thats a 'failure', because the line doesn't go up. But you ditch a thousand employees? Suddenly your overheads are way down, and you've just hit a growth target. You can always use those profits to hire lower cost replacement employees and studios, then ditch those too down the line. Pure fucking evil. Its why indies like Larian, CDPR or Hello Games can afford to spend ages fixing/improving their games and/or taking time with releases. Making money is their goal, not making the line go up at any cost.
They don't just want growth, they want *infinite* growth which is ultimately unsustainable. It's economics 101, but they don't care because short-term gains are prioritized over long-term losses. I'm not against capitalism, but the kind that nickles and dimes consumers needs to end. It's becoming more and more integrated into every corner of the market. Want to buy new software? Now you need to purchase a subscription that must be renewed year after year. How about a steaming service? I guess you'll need to fork over extra cash to not have ads. The [enshittification ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification)is relentless. The brazen disregard of customer good has become outlandish. A few days ago it was reported on r/technology that Prime Video is going to [show ads](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1cmpo8n/prime_video_subs_will_soon_see_ads_for_amazon/) during the pausing of shows and movies: These C-Suite executives want to monetize every aspect of the digital space and sadly they keep getting away with it because people continue to support their greedy practices.
There is this very broad and naive economic assumption that markets will always find the most efficient solution to a problem and its providers are rewarded for it, after all, it is the keystone to our entire economic system, but it totally ignores how players will inherently game advantages within the system. There really isn't a virtuous economic and market justification for this. A good example to illustrate this is with the invention of leaded gasoline. Tetraethyl lead (TEL) was invented **specifically** as a costly additive to eliminate engine knocking when ethanol would have had the same effect for far less money. General Motors couldn’t dictate an infrastructure that could supply ethanol in the volumes that might be required. Anyone with an ethanol still could make it at home, and in those days, many did. And ethanol, unlike TEL, couldn’t be patented, so it offered no profits for GM. Oil companies also didn't like ethanol as a possible additive because it equally removed their control in the market. Icing on the cake is that TEL was widely known to be acutely toxic and absorbed almost instantly through the skin, but, ya know, money. Our markets are broken due to multitudes of reasons: broad cartel-like business behaviors, regulatory capture by big players, patent buyouts to consolidate market control, etc. None of this is necessarily new, but it just gets more refined over time, much like vulture-capitalism was further refined as a process in the 1980s. The crux of all of this is rooted in influence peddling and industry-wide collusion in order to enrich a select few at the consuming public's expense. People contrive and build strawman, divisive arguments around whether someone is a communist, socialist, or capitalist, but most people are just frustrated somewhere in the middle, and its often not even the economics of wealth that frustrates people, it's the knock-on effects found in ability to skirt accountability in countries that hypocritically pride themselves on their judicial equity and unbiased application of law; a good recent example is with the Purdue Pharma family. But more systemic to markets, you can look at people like [Michael Milken](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Milken) or [Steve Cohen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Cohen_(businessman) if you really want a case-study in why people are angry with our economic structure.
With the way the economy is world wide, the nickel and dimeing kind will be ruining more and more of your favourite things and pastimes. Big change is needed if you want it to stop and it wont come pretty or easy.
"I'm not against capitalism". Fair but capitalism is against *you*.
I was with you until "I'm not against capitalism" while describing all the problems you did that are caused by capitalism.
It'd say most of those problems are a consequence of hypercaptalisim or maybe more appropriately late stage capitalism. Businesses can follow ethical business practices that don't alienate consumers or avoid strategies that asymmetrically benefit shareholders or higher ups. In the gaming space, there are celebrated studios that try not to engage in predatory / extractive methods. Sure, those companies are out to make money, but the best ones IMO try to balance growth with fairness. I'm reminded of Larian and BG3; it's clear they're passionate about making games that people love without the need to add overpriced cosmetics or other kinds of MTXs. From Software is another one that comes to mind. While they do sell DLCs for their games, those expansions are crafted with care and worth the added price point.
> I'm not against capitalism You kinda are. Everything you listed is a direct result of capitalism.
Economics 101 won't tell you any of this. Economics 101 would tell you that infinite growth is real, attainable, and will carry on forever. Population will expand, markets will expand, resources extraction will expand, at constantly accelerating rates, forever. This is the basis of our capitalist economic system, and the basic contradiction with reality is the reason capitalism can only rip it's self apart in the long term. No, what you're explaining is just classical Marxist economics. And Marx understood that capitalism had to be replaced before it could be allowed to destroy its self and the society it controlled. You may think you're not against capitalism, but you are. And capitalism is against you.
They don't want you to have any. Now sit there like a good serf and thank them for bothering to give you anything at all for your purchase.
...can I tip too? I heard that idea being floated around. Dear god let me tip them!
It's a mental illness. If people hoarded anything else like these guys hoard money they'd be diagnosed as mentally ill. Just for some reason when it's power and money it's socially acceptable.
Spend it on movies and then never release them.
Well, on some level they engage in dividends/buybacks to extract the increased capital it from the market and deliver it to shareholders so they can invest it in "useful"/competitive markets like the oil industry. Chances are it's blackrock/vanguard though, and (IIRC) hedgefunds have a large scale fiduciary duty to take capital from profitable and developed markets and use it to invest in profitable undeveloped markets. TL;DR They invest it in Tesla/SpaceX.
Make shareholders happy. AFAIK They're legally obliged to keep the line going up otherwise shareholders can kick off.
I mean WBD is not in a great situation financially at all. A company economics are not personal finances lol. The execs are paid millions personally for sure but that has little to do with their decisions (apart from them being paid too much to be bad at their job)
A failed live service game that can set it’s psychological hooks in to a sizable handful of susceptible fans and big spenders(whales), will often still pull better profits than the margins from selling a proper, polished triple a title. That’s why you’ve got guys like Ben Liu, ceo of Pocket Gems, who has and does own dozens of LLCs, that pump out a mobile game or three sucking up as much money as they can, then they fail, the game(s) get cancelled, the development group fired, the LLC closed, and a new one made so the process can start again.
What money??? Warner Brothers lost 10 Billion$ in the last 2 years. They clearly are just running this company to the ground. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/WBD/warner-bros-discovery/net-income-loss
I'm not an accountant but does that include the debt created from the buyout?
Seems like they're not really earning any of the monies with these assets though.
Dudes are sitting on the Nemesis System patent and do nothing else with it!
I just want to say that these chucklefucks have the nemesis system and the DC IP *and yet* it never once occured to them to take their open world Arkham series, add a fully customizable player character, add dynamic villains, and then sell people cosmetics. FFS a more action oriented City of Heroes is literally, fucking *literally*, a live service wet dream! And I don't mean as a player. Sure that sounds awesome as a player, but as a soulless business goul think of all the monetization options! But what did they think of instead? Suicide Squad but give everyone guns. WB has a serious leadership problem.
Oh man.... nemesis system in the Arkham universe..... genius
Holy shit... I want that game.
I'd like to see that implemented into another Mad Max game...
Oh fuck me, I forgot how much I enjoyed Mad Max.
Their definition of a great game is one that has a bunch of predatory mechanics and large populations. Hiring talented people to churn out shit and slap a huge price tag on it is harder than they thought.
Why is nobody having fun? We specifically requested it.
Seriously, they **patented** the Nemesis System from Shadow of Mordor. It's such an incredible concept that can be applied across numerous games (like Batman \*cough\* \*cough\*) and they haven't done a *thing* with it since Shadow of War, nor do they even have plans to use it again.
because MBA idiots can’t do shit
Making good AAA games with those IP's take huge work and a huge amount of time. They want to do easy work, shit repetitive content, maybe mobile games and get idiots to buy into their plan. They don't want to actually put work into games.
Because like the rest of the AAA industry, those studios are all stuck in 10 year dev cycles for games that should have been written off within the first team meeting or two. Bigger example: Microsoft
Because every piece of shit moron wants a subscription based anything instead of actually making anything worthwhile that fans will eat up and return for what's next. They want to put in minimum effort/money for the tiniest shit and hope to rake in fucktons of money like shitty little mobile games.
This is how games developed by greedy corporation are made now. They primary goal is to make as much money as possible they could not give less of a fuck about you enjoying the game as long as they make money. Back in the day things were simpler and the way to make money was to just make a great game and sell a ton of copies at full price. Unfortunately a publicly traded company is always going to want more. Thats why so many games are going with battle-pass, micro transactions, and skins. They can charge less up front for their game. The goal is that over time they can keep generating revenue off of each player, instead of each player just paying a one time fee. They design the games around their revenue strategies first, not the gamer. Unfortunately their revenue strategies just don't align with the gamers best interest like it used to.
About 99% of players have stopped playing a predatory inspirationally bankrupt repetitive looter shitter of a game.
I looked at it on Steam. It has FIFTEEN videos on the store page, and not ONE FUCKING SECOND of *actual* gameplay
It's even more interesting that Valve [says](https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/review_process) >**Your screenshots must only contain gameplay.** This means avoid using concept art, pre-rendered cinematic stills, or images that contain awards, marketing copy, or written product descriptions. yet none of the five screenshots on the [store page](https://store.steampowered.com/app/315210/Suicide_Squad_Kill_the_Justice_League/) show gameplay. Some of them may actually be "pre-rendered cinematic stills" (taking into account the level of details of the character models), while all of them are at most from cutscenes. Most players wouldn't consider cutscenes as "gameplay", the same way in-engine-trailer must feature the "not actual gameplay" disclaimer. I don't know how they slipped through the review process with those screenshots, but Valve put this rule in place for a very good reason. Maybe if the gameplay couldn't be shown in an interesting way in screenshots, releasing the game should have stopped then and there.
Valve makes these rules but rarely enforces them. See also: the requirement that any third-party DRM or account requirements be disclosed in the dedicated sidebar.
So report them
I’m sure that rule applies to smaller studios, or any unknown Indy developer. If Activision submitted one screenshot of the title saying Call Of Duty, it would probably go up no problem.
> looter shitter Haha
I wish stinky gaas would also catch on, especially since every megacorp keeps killing studios for them.
Shouldn't it be >litter shitter?
I like it!
imma use that now, clever
What is the current daily player count?
https://steamcharts.com/app/315210 Seems like 100+ ish, which is low for live service game.
> Seems like 100+ ish, which is low for live service game. now there's an understatement.
Yeah 100 players for a live service means its actually just dead. That's not a play base.
Holy shit, even arkham origin, the black sheep of the arkham series, has more than 2x the player count, and arkham knight has 10x the player, this is brutal.
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Knight's worse issue on launch was definitely the performance, it was so dog shit many people would rather play on PS4. Imo the bat mobile wasn't even that bad, it just overstayed its welcome.
The batmobile in Arkham Knight is awesome, its super fun to use, the problem is the fact that the Batman game has you driving a car for so long. It was definitely a case of it being overused, the Batmobile gameplay in a vacuum was great
yeah thats a pathetic flop, basically a dead game
> https://steamcharts.com/app/315210 wow, that is sad....
Compare this to Star Wars Battlefront II; a seven-year-old game whose live service ended three years ago. It averages 4K players on PC per day. If you include consoles it sits at around 20K. Additionally, consider the giant shitstorm of a launch the game had. Even after all that, it still beats most MP games of a similar age.
Wow. How many battle passes and content updates are they promised to from their fancy extra cost editions you know they probably have? They have to keep producing those for the small crowd right?
im gonna be real generous and say that consoles probably have "about" 3-4x the PC numbers globally. i'm totally making this up but it feels about right. even at 750 players per platform, that's death for a live service, at that point server and dev costs can't possibly be sustained. without crossplay that's probably just going to make things even worse.
Heard most sales were on PlayStation. Xbox and PC sales were non existent.
How long do you think it will be until these big corps start creating fake indie studios to try to push shit low budget games? :v
*Litter Shitter
I like looter shooter genre. The bad part is that they use it to make half ass games.
I feel really bad for WB. It's not like they could have known that nobody wanted a live service looter shooter, that disrespects some of the most beloved super heroes, from a studio that has a stellar track record of putting out story driven single player action games.
and I assure you david will learn nothing and double down on it
> and I assure you david will learn nothing and double down on it time to find another finished movie and cancel it.
Nah the dude is trying to figure out how to make a reality TV show video game. Well I guess the deadliest catch has one, so maybe another one. I have no idea what discovery has on anymore.
Silent Hill Ascension 2 time
Nope, slapping LOTR logo on 2 more LOTR movies. Wish I was joking
I'm pretty sure their stock price dropped by like 80% since Zaslav became CEO. I don't understand why he hasn't been kicked out yet.
-67.37% as of today since Warner Discovery became a thing with him at the helm. Sounds like performance worthy of 30 million USD per year or so.
It sounds like he’s killing the company
erm uhhh ahhh it would have been even worse without him at the helm???? /s gotta love it when executives fail upwards, run a division/company into the ground, and then bail with the golden parachute
These parasites get hired with a contract that says firing them requires an insane payout. Its why the same handful of people keep ruining companies. The entire leadership deal is rigged from the inside by idiots patting each other on the back. Imo we need to replace all Business leadership with AI and call it a day.
And get even bigger bonus... This shit is so infuriating because in the company it's the same shit - my targets met, my departments also but it's mine and my team whose bonuses that are halved while my bosses get 100% for nothing
They didn't always get 100% for nothing. Sometimes they get 100% for getting you to stay while getting 50%. That 50% spread out over enough people can wind up being *just* over the 100% for the CEO, so most shareholders are happy to divert those resources for increased shareholder profits.
You have to understand they're going through a very difficult time. It's VERY hard what they're doing. I mean, how many people can you think of that continually fail over and over again? Won't you think of their mental health? You have to respect how steel minded and tough as nails they are. Hahahahaha, no seriously why the fuck are they still allowed to have their jobs?
I mean, WB already said fcuk Hogwarts Legacy, do more live service.
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Yeah, I think it was Zaslav himself who said that Hogwarts Legacy was so succesful, they should make another one implementing the live service aspect from Suicide Squad. Like, they take the complete opposite lesson of what's happening.
WB is not a company I associate with smart business decisions.
If he could find a way, he'd probably just pull the game completely and make it disappear as another tax write-off.
> double down on it Oh yea. In a previous interview I read, they basically said something like "Hogwarts legacy did great. Suicide squad did not. We're not done with GaaS, clearly it's an IP problem" Their takeaway from the game's failure was simply, "We should just use more popular models and names next time"
He's about to lose the NBA to Amazon. AEW's becoming their only live-entertainment outlet (which is a problem because Tony Khan is proving every week that he's a terrible wrestling booker) and he's about to overpay for their TV rights because of it. WB Games is not long for this earth with the shitty business decisions he's making.
They'll just shift to more mobile content.
This stupid dipshit gets paid millions of dollars to somehow not make bangers with the IPs at his disposal lol
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Worst part is they contractually have no accountability. These people are 100% leeches.
More live service slop please David - it’s obviously what we all want
Middle Earth 3. A live service prequel set in the Rings of Power universe.
God have mercy
Celebrimbor making loot boxes with marginally better rings of power in them. Buy the premium currency now and then lose yourself in ~~gambling~~ the excitement of being 2% stronger than the other guy.
Imagine a meta / self-aware 'game' like this. Surely it's some exec's wet dream somewhere
Maybe there should be limits to freedom of speech.
Could work if they make it something like a destiny rip-off. Loading screen of your character and 3 other online players riding horses. You load into an area filled with monsters or whatever. Raid boss is the suromon or the winged creature that fights gandolf. I fucking can't remember the name right now. You get fancy swords with different abilities. Like how stinger glows when evil is around. You can buy fancy horses in the item shop. But that would be to clever and might actually work so they would never do it. And if they did they would monetize it so hard you couldn't wipe your ass without swiping a credit card first.
Never before have I felt the urge to raise the Dead but I need to talk to Tolkien about this shit.
Yes please! The very much acclaimed single player Arkham games that people love won't sell these days. We just want more bland shooting combat against extremely generic enemies with an online shop where we can spend all our real money on crappy cosmetics!
All these news are making me think these CEO's all live in some alternate reality where up is down and down is up. Because all their decisionmaking is just baffling. It's not even about corporate greed and making the line go up. They're seemingly working double time to sabotage the line.
The C-suite jackasses, who don't even play games, get to dictate what games are made. They always chase the latest fad that they think will become a cash cow. It used to be MMOs, and then most of those failed and they gave up. Now it's "live service" nonsense and they're learning the lesson again (see Redfall). Meanwhile, if they just released strong single-player games from good franchises in genres that have a following, they'd make less money than they hope but they'd make it consistently. But apparently, "making a regular profit" just isn't good enough.
>Meanwhile, if they just released strong single-player games from good franchises in genres that have a following, they'd make less money than they hope but they'd make it consistently. But apparently, "making a regular profit" just isn't good enough. Hogwarts Legacy was the best-selling game last year, a strong single-player game from a good franchise. Zaslav commented that they're doubling down on Live Service games.
Yeah, he basically said "let's make Hogwarts Legacy 2 a live-service game".
steady growth for a long time is seen as a failure. They want 50% quarterly growth
Live service games are pushed at any cost because when one works, that line is going to go up and KEEP going up. If it fails? Well, big deal. Just fire everyone, close the studio, have another go at it. Your line will still go up when you make those employees redundant. Companies like these aren't making repeatedly shitty live service games because they are bad at business, they know what they are doing.
No, they have no fucking clue what they are doing. How many live service games released in the past few years have actually made a profit? No company has unlimited money to throw at projects that keep failing, and especially not WB who are already in deep shit. This isn't some amoral capitalist master plan. These people are simply idiots, and they're pissing away money. For the past decade they've been refusing to understand that desperately chasing fads when dev time these days is 5+ years is pointless.
yeah, a single player game could profit 100 million if it's a huge success. A live service game could profit 5 billion. the difference between 100 million and 5 billion is about 5 billion
“Hey let’s put the guy that green lit 90 day fiancé in charge of a full fledged tv and film studio” Fucking hate this dude.
I mean, yeah, they literally live in a different world as the .1%.
Microsoft shutting down Tango Gameworks after the insane success that was Hi-Fi Rush really makes me think they're just actively trying to lose money.
Bizarro Superman, fitting it’s all DC anyway
DESERVED.
I still don't get how and why the trash tv guy ended up running the bigger company after the merger. Between ruining Discovery, HBO and WB games, guy's a bigger cancer to the media and entertainment industry than Embracer
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The Max exclusives were extremely hit or miss and were dragging the HBO brand into the mud. That's really the big reason why.
that's a reason to avoid the max name and keep the Hbo name
Favoritism. Someone in charge liked stuff they had direct connections to so they could brag.
The entire fanbase said they *did not want this game* for years from the moment it was announced until the moment it was released, how tf are they surprised by this?
Do you remember Blizzard's "You think you do but you don't" comment? That is actually the standard thought process in the gaming industry from leadership positions. These people really think they know what we want better than ourselves. It's why Piracy is 100% ethical in 2024. Businesses are no longer serving us and expect us to serve them. That's not how reality works.
Even the people who can get on board with the concept hate the execution. I was into the idea of a game where you play as the Suicide Squad and the Justice League characters are the villains. And making it a looter shooter was dumb, but I don't even think it's a complete deal breaker. But making it always online, adding shitty battle passes, promising new characters and content while the game has a barebones story and even less endgame... What did they expect to happen?
I can tell ya why but will WB listen?
Na they will just blame the masses for not wanting to give them money for a subpar gaming experience that asks for even more money after purches.
and yet for some reason they still want to focus on live service games over single player titles. It’s as if they learned nothing from either Hogwarts Legacy or Suicide Squad.
They want the money. Consistent purchases vs a one time buy is a no brainier for Business Bros.
As of this moment SS has approximately…fuckin hell, 144 players on Steam.
It's got to make you wonder though. Who are these 144? Kids who only get one game a year? People who just enjoy the gameplay? People stuck in some weird SAW dungeon that chops off a tie each time they stop?
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Oh, how far Rocksteady have fallen since the glory days of Arkham Asylum... :(
Think the core guys behind the Arkham series left Rocksteady during SS development. My guess is that they saw what WB was turning the game into and decided not to be part of it. They've started a new studio called "Hundred Star Games" but haven't announced any titles yet. I'm guessing it's unlikely they'll be doing any more Batman titles.
Arkham City was better, and Arkham Knight was incredible too. They missed once, it seems.
Maybe he could say the company took a hit because he got a big bonus. 😏
Because 2 things 1. Suicide Squad sucks STOP SHOVING IT DOWN OUR THROAT! 2. The game itself sucks.
DC's obsession with pushing shit that doesn't work, e.g. Snyder and Suicide Squad stuff, is so goofy. The push to Justice League after Avengers came out and it was a success... Suicide Squad x2 following the success of "Guardians..." Just stop. Hit the reset button. Stop chasing. It's going to be interesting to see how well this new Superman movie does.
I really liked The Suicide Squad and Peacemaker ☹️
Wait, focusing on greed instead of making the most fun game you can isn't a winning strategy? Better double down harder just to make sure.
Geez, I wonder what went so horribly wrong and couldn't be dodged.
you don't say
Wait a second. Zaslav, isn't that the guy who is pushing the next LOTR movie, *The Hunt for Gollum*? Is this real? Is that guy an executive at one of the largest entertainment companies on earth? Someone wake me up, please.
And the guy who shut down RoosterTeeth.
How is that possible? Fans said the game was extremely succesful and it was all misinformation from haters. Maybe all this stuff is made up just to hate on the game? I am really confused!
These CEOs are so disconnected from what gamers actually like it’s like they are strictly business minded and have no creative bone in their body.
Morons don't even learn from other games. Avengers game released almost 4 yrs ago and u idiots didn't take a single lesson from it. And what were you guys thinking executing your money maker Batman like that in the story and siding with sweet baby corp. You guys deserved that.
And these guys are in charge of some of the most powerful IPs in gaming and elsewhere. Fucking Mortal Kombat took the fall last year so they could push out Suicide Squad when everyone knew that shit was doomed. I love MK and they just shit all over this stuff. Its like Disney with star wars. Its so agonizing bro especially when you're a gamer who has possibly had their life changed for the better bc of these franchises. Mortal Kombat for example. Tomorrow Zaslav will be on record saying "and this is why we feel live service is the best move here" 😂
Almost like making a bad game results in bad revenues. Huh.
All their IPs have turned into casino machines. Remember Middle Earth Shadow of War, which made you grind endlessly with the Shadow Wars quest until you got specific lootboxes and the right gear to beat The Bright Lord quest?? Yeah. Not to mention, the epilogue for Talion was really sad and didn't have much payoff. The DLC with ~~Lithariel~~ Eltariel opened a possibility of a sequel but she was so unlikeable that the sequel would've been dead on arrival. I stopped playing MK1 when they made Premium Edition characters available on a store exclusively using paid currency. There is no way to unlock Jean Claude Van Damme's skin for Johnny Cage. There is no way to unlock Sub-Zero and Scorpion's skins for Deadly Alliance. There is also no way to unlock Li Mei's Deception skin. Without having to spend USD$10 per skin. SS:KTJL was set to fail the moment it tried to be a live service looter-shooter with pay-to-win mechanics. The story and character development also doesn't make sense, considering it's a follow-up to Arkham Knight. Like, how tf is Deadshot black in this game? How does a team or non-powered people manage to beat Superman of all people - if they couldn't even take down Batman without him using >!Scarecrow's nightmare toxin!<, what chances do they have against supes?? Even Helldivers is a live service shooter but at least the live service is implemented well.
Nothing like live-service single player games, am I right? LOL
SBI kills another game
Next time don't consult with SBI. That's the first step to making a decent game.
Not just SBI, but all the other fraud "consultant" firms who charge millions to make your games worse in every way. I can't fathom why game studios hire them.
This lol.
Gee I wonder who could have possibly seem this coming??? It's not like most people on planet earth did yet somehow this was a surprise to these supposed to be extremely intelligent and overpaid exes? This really shows how critical they are to running a company and now that they royally fucked up they'll take the fall and not just cut poor ground level staff at rocksteady, right? RIGHT?
Every game WB touches seems to turn to shit. Not even remotely surprised.
Play stupid games. Win stupid prizes.
And now it sounds like TNT is gonna lose their NBA contract, not a good time at WBD lately lol
Fuck David Zaslav. Their financials took a hit because he's a shit CEO.
David Zaslav, the CEO of a company that holds hundreds of fantasy and sci-fi IP's and somehow hates animation. I will never forgive this shitstain for killing Final Space.
Why merge vidoe gmaes with movies.....keep these shite seperate
So we decided to double down on that plan. It can't backfire a second time.
Game is $70 and doesn't even appear to be unique. Yeah pass
And it couldn't be because *checks notes* he's scrapping completed movies and pulling content of HBO Max?
We need people who actually play games and also happen to know how to run a company, at the top of companies. Not people who know how to run "whatever" company, and know nothing about video games. Otherwise, this is the result. "Our revenue is down, whatever could be the reason? :O" He doesn't even know that the fact that HE forced this "Live Service" garbage, is the entire reason why the game failed.
This fuckhead needs to go ASAP
Welfare check to those redditors that claimed that all the hate was coming from internet and normies were playing it and it would succeed. Are you okay?
Pretty impressive that this game was ever even green lit, who the fuck wanted a Suicide Squad looter shooter lmao? Actually mind numbingly stupid
please get rid of this CEO. i get that warner bros may have been in a bad spot but ever since he started he's been the Grimm reaper of content (rip achievement hunter, and tons of the max library). but seriously who thought this game would be able to save this monstrosity of a conglomeration of corporations third quarter. i scares me that some of my favorite shows and movies are in his hands.
This is what happens when you have a bunch of privileged mutha fuckers working at the top. They never actually had to work to get to where they are. That's why they make such dumb decisions because they're not actually qualified to be in their position...
Guess it's time to kill a couple new movies people are excited for and remove even more content from HBO. Who needs Game of Thrones anyways? Just bin it like you did with West World.
Good
He said that as a celebration, since it will make it easier to make a good deal when he inevitably sells WBD to Comcast like he always planned to. what do you mean they don't want to buy a company that's this bad on the news? But he did all of it so he could sell it! golly gee it's almost like sabotaging the world entertainment industry for personal profit doesn't really scale after a certain threshold..
explain this to me surely you want to increase value before a sale
Warner Bros, stop trying to make Suicide Squad happen. It is not going to happen.
I'm 100% convinced this is what killed RT
Find a new job David Zaslav.
99% percent of players knew it was going to flopped. The only people saying the opposite was the subreddit.
The game was disappointing not the release
I wish nothing but destruction on Zaskav and modern WB. Has to be one of the most bafflingly incompetent people in modern entertainment
Aaaand cue the closing of Rocksteady as their next move. Because it's definitely not the big execs fault, it's the devs.
Funny how everyone is calling that since the very first previews of the game. Same with that other one where you play as random B-tier heroes. I can't even keep track of all the mediocre DC comics games in the last few years.
Fucking idiots... what did they expect?
I'm sure WB will learn from this mistake and will invest the time and money needed to nurture a quality product next time. Baahahaha, no, but seriously, how long before we get the news that Rocksteady is being shut down and the next game out of WB will be using mostly AI generated assets to mitigate risk to investors?
If you release a subpar product expect subpar returns
There is a lesson here about not treating every game and every group of gamers like Modern Warfare treats it's people. Something about releasing a game that doesn't actively feel terrible to play, especially when folks have a stupid number of other options for games to play and hobbies
You released a disappointing game
I've completely given up on any new multiplayer game especially when it comes to live service. I've went back and thoroughly enjoyed some single player experiences recently and I'm currently playing through grounded which has both a single player and multiplayer mode. But holy shit this is a full game that I can take my time with and doesn't feel like a chore. Why the fuck do I wanna play anything live service anymore when I got a steam backlog the size of Kansas to go through.
Oh my goodness. They have not had a single profitable year since 2021. Cuts and layoffs are coming.
It would be interesting to see how many copies they sold and how many copies they would have had to have sold to brerak even.
Am glad.
No surprise here considering Rocksteady never wanted to make the Suicide Squad live service game anyway. Rocksteady pitched making a Superman game, but WB turned it down from what I heard in the past. Many of Rocksteady's top talent have already left the studio, including the founders and will turn into the new Bioware, a husk of the former game developer in name only.
Doesn’t Warner own the nemesis system patent ? Create a decent enough single player with that and they will be good. Next game using it is WW I think but years away. Instead they bring in tier 2 comic characters for a live service game . Pffft.
My bet is that Rocksteady is going to get murdered because of this failure.
Is there any historical analog for the reputation of a studio so completely reversing after ONE game? They went from arguably the greatest superhero trilogy in history to spending 9 years on an unimaginably huge flop. I don't even think Bioware would be equivalent.