Overview
- Two senior developers, Axel Rydby and Johnny Armstrong, told Bloomberg this week that years of troubled work on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League left them emotionally drained and questioning their future in games.
- They say Warner Bros. executives and publisher-driven metrics pushed the project toward replayability and monetization, shifting meetings from creative design to revenue-focused spreadsheets.
- Repeated delays, expanding scope and tight six-month deadlines made the game hard to test and prevented the deeper fixes the team needed, the developers said.
- The 2024 release performed poorly and reportedly produced about $200 million in write-offs for Warner Bros. Games, triggering layoffs at Rocksteady and cancellations elsewhere.
- Rydby and Armstrong have left Rocksteady and launched a modest Kickstarter for Secret of Circadia with a goal of roughly $11,000 and an explicit anti‑generative AI notice, a move that underscores a turn back to small, passion‑driven projects.