Rocksteady Studios Begins Staff Cuts in Response to ‘Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League’ Failure, Quality Assurance Team Reportedly Cut in Half

Ah, Labor Day, that good old American holiday meant to recognize workers across the country – or, if you’re Rocksteady Studios, make sure some of them don’t have jobs anymore because, according to a new report, the failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League prompted the developer to limit its activities.

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According to a report published by Eurogamer editor-in-chief Tom Phillips, who himself allegedly learned about the studio’s development from studio employees who spoke to him directly, Rocksteady “has seen its headcount nearly halved in the past month,” dropping “from 33 team members to 15, with poor sales of Suicide Squad directly cited as the reason for the ‘restructuring.'”

In addition to the quality assurance staff, the job cuts also resulted in the loss of “a number of junior employees, but also several team members who had been employed at Rocksteady for over five years.”

As if that wasn’t enough, according to reports posted on the social media platform, one employee was reportedly let go over the weekend while he was on paternity leave (at the time of writing, the specific employee has not been identified or posted on social media).

Rocksteady’s quality assurance cuts have affected a number of “team members with specialist knowledge,” according to employees, which in turn will allegedly require remaining employees to take on additional work as they try to rebuild the team.

As of this writing, neither Rocksteady Studios nor its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, have made any public comment regarding these staff cuts.

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Significantly, these cuts came less than a month after the aforementioned WBD reported on the pathetic situation Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League led to a double-digit decline in gaming revenues.

As detailed in the Q2 2024 earnings report, the studios’ total revenue for the quarter compared to the same period last year “declined 4% (excluding currency-related declines)” due to issues across its television, film and video game studios.

“TV revenues fell 27%, primarily due to the timing of TV production starts and lower licensing sales,” WBD reported. “Theatrical revenues rose 19% excluding FX, primarily due to higher home entertainment revenues Dune: Part Twoand higher ticket revenues thanks to performances Godzilla x Kong: New Empirewhich was released at the end of March.”

In addition, the company admitted that “its gaming revenue declined by 41%, which was mainly due to poor performance Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League this year, compared to the strong results Hogwarts Legacy “in the previous year.”

During the presentation of the financial results for Q2 2024, WBD’s CFO, Gunnar Wiendenfels, referring to the decline in revenues, admitted that the widely criticized sale at DC was the main reason for the company’s financial failures.

“Turning to the studios, we enjoyed healthy theatrical revenue growth despite the weak performance of recent releases, aided by strong carryover from first-quarter releases,” the executive said. “The consumer revenue experience continued to perform well and we remain very optimistic about the opportunities we see from better coordination of franchise management processes. Television was down, particularly as we worked through the final deliveries delayed by the strike, which sets us up for strong growth in the second half of the year. While, as we indicated in the last quarter, gaming continues to struggle with last year’s Hogwarts Legacy computer and muffled response to Suicide Squad this year.”

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