Rocksteady is allegedly returning to what they arguably should have focused on all along: another single-player game, or more specifically, another single-player Batman game.
The renowned studio behind beloved superhero adventures Batman: Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, and Arkham Knight has experienced a rough few years. Developers seemed to be trapped in development limbo while creating Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League for seven years, a live-service looter shooter that did not leverage the team’s strengths, was plagued by behind-the-scenes chaos, and ultimately arrived too late in development to generate significant revenue. The parent company WB Games reported a $200 million loss attributed to the project.
Bloomberg now reports that Rocksteady is reverting to what initially earned them acclaim, citing anonymous sources familiar with the studio’s plans. Allegedly, Rocksteady is “looking to return” to single-player Batman, although the game is still years away from being launched. It remains uncertain if the project will continue within its existing Arkham universe or if it will be set in a different canon. I suspect the events of Suicide Squad, which ended bizarrely in a comic strip-style post-credits scene, could make the latter option a more intriguing possibility. (Batman Beyond might be exciting!)
The shift in direction may be influenced by several factors. Parent company Warner Bros. Discovery announced that David Haddad, head of WB Games and the driving force behind its live-service initiatives, is leaving the company. Other online endeavors, like Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions and soon-to-be-terminated MultiVersus, have similarly underperformed. In fact, some of the few purely single-player titles in recent years came from Hogwarts Legacy, which has impressively sold over 30 million copies to date.
Whatever Rocksteady is developing next may not involve studio founders Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker, who departed during the development of Suicide Squad and have quietly established a new company called Hundred Person Games.
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