Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League's Poor Performance Leads To Layoffs At Rocksteady

After directly blaming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League for the company's poor financial performance back in May, it probably isn't surprising to hear that Rocksteady, the developer Warner Bros. Games tasked with the creation of the game, is now reportedly being hit with layoffs.

Sources told Eurogamer that Squad's QA staff has been cut in half, reducing the headcount to about 15, and positions in other departments have been made "redundant," including one employee allegedly on maternity leave when they received the news. This will result in the remaining team members bearing the brunt of additional work for the flailing title. Management has acknowledged quality will probably suffer from the cuts.

What's particularly sad about this round of layoffs is that the people impacted by them didn't really do anything wrong. Say what you want about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League as a full title, but the development of the product wasn't the issue. It wasn't shoddy development that doomed this project, that blame falls squarely on the higher ups that never nailed down the direction for the title and, in some cases, created a "vision" that led the team to not even know what kind of game they were working on while they were making it.

Forcing the title into a "live service, multiplayer" model didn't do it any favors, either.

Yet another case of poor management, executive decisions, and lack of focus from the top leading to the rank-and-file developers paying the cost.