Has Warner Bros. become the video game industry’s biggest villain? –

It is always disappointing to hear of a video game developer being shut down or fired after a difficult series of events. There is nothing glorifying about individuals losing their jobs and being laid off, but at the same time, video games are a business, and sometimes a business decision must be made for the health and efficiency (perhaps even survival) of the overall entity. However, the recentWarner Bros. Games studio closures just feel wrong and leave an incredibly bad taste in my mouth. There is something about the way this portfolio of developers has been managed in recent years – and to that extent even the broader entertainment division of Warner Bros. – that makes the recent decision feel all the worse.

For those who don’t know, I will very briefly summarize what happened here before moving on. Following an earlier Bloomberg report on the state of Warner Bros. Games, which suggested that Monolith Productions was rebooting Wonder Woman after a difficult development, it has since been confirmed that the production giant has decided to shut down Monolith, cancel Wonder Woman and even shut down MultiVersus maker Player First Games and mobile specialist Warner Bros. San Diego. The confirmation came in an email reported by Kotaku claiming it was a “strategic change of direction and not a reflection of these teams or the talent that exists in them.”

Despite the fact that Monolith and Player First were both working on DC titles, and the former even on other franchises operated by Warner in the past, the major entertainment company went so far as to say that this was done in order to “better structure our development studios and investments around building the best possible games with our key franchises,” with references to Harry Potter, DC, Mortal Kombat and Game of Thrones. Yes, that’s a little confusing to get your head around, because it feels contradictory at best, and even off target, especially since Game of Thrones has had a small, maybe even absent presence in the video game space since well, almost forever.

But at the same time, again, I see some sense in Warner’s decision here, because as disappointing as it is, the millions and millions already spent on Wonder Woman and a lack of a positive product means it faces a huge challenge to recoup its production costs. Scrapping this idea and moving on is probably for the best, otherwise we could find Monolith trapped in hell like Rocksteady was with Suicide Squad. Still, you can’t completely scrap a team as talented and legendary as Monolith and then say you have “remain focused and eager to return to producing high-quality games for our passionate fans and developed by our world-class studios.” That’s about as contradictory as it gets.

My biggest problem with this whole troubling state of affairs is that Warner Bros. has been leading its developers down a path that is difficult to support for quite some time. They have been chasing a live service dragon for so long (like Sony…) and consistently failing along the way, and perhaps most inexcusably, giving really competent single player developers the task of making it happen. Warner Bros. has been shooting itself in the foot for years, and 2024’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, MultiVersus and Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions are just three solid examples. Now Monolith and Player First are reaping the benefits of this ridiculous focus, with Player First feeling particularly infuriated that Warner only acquired the team last summer…. Why buy them if the future seemed so bleak?

It’s hard to see this recent turn of events by Warner as anything other than greed-driven and inexcusably mismanaged. Granted, it wouldn’t be the first time the production giant has faced that kind of criticism, since we’re talking about the same company that threw out Coyote vs. Acme and Batgirl because it wanted tax write-offs, despite the fact that both films were largely ready to go. This is also a company that made The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim in order to maintain its hold on the Middle-earth brand and even admitted that this was the case just before its premiere, and also a company that managed to piss off perhaps the biggest name in filmmaking today, Christopher Nolan, because he was afraid that Warner could not be trusted to release his The Odyssey film with the proper marketing strategy… Warner Bros. has been missing the mark for a long time, and this latest abandonment of video games is just another example.

If all this wasn’t enough to make you as angry about Warner Bros.’s latest moves as I am, I’d also like to add that despite shutting down the 30+ year old Monolith, Warner has decided to retain the trademark patent for the revolutionary Nemesis system the developer created. Yes. As Eurogamer notes, the developers are fired, but they can’t even take their own creation with them…. I would feel less strongly about this if Warner was making full use of the Nemesis idea from the beginning, but it’s not, and nothing gives me any confidence that will change. So until 2036, when the patent expires (assuming Warner doesn’t do the expected and just renews the patent), we won’t see this fantastic idea in a video game again….

Business is business and I will always have that in mind to some degree when I see decisions like this being made, as companies don’t become worth as much as Warner Bros. without upsetting people along the way. However, this company routinely proves its incompetence and frankly, I’m hugely concerned about Avalanche Software, NetherRealm Studios and Rocksteady, as if Hogwarts Legacy 2, the next Mortal Kombat / Injustice, and the rumored Batman -game (which, judging by recent events, I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes a casualty before it arrives in a few years) fail to succeed at the level Warner expects, we could see even more talented teams, studios and ideas scrapped and rotting in the streets.