$200 Million Woke Disaster Humiliated, Ends with Total Slap in the Face to the Few Fans Left
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If it weren’t for the unmitigated calamity that was “Concord,” the biggest video game disaster of 2024 would rather easily be “Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League.”
But at least “Concord” was put out of its misery swiftly.
“Suicide Squad” trudged along for over a year as a zombie money pit (more on this shortly) before being unceremoniously concluded on Tuesday with the game’s final update.
And given how much of a slap in the face the final update was to the few people who actually invested time into the game, there’s a case to be made that “Suicide Squad” is every bit as big a failure — if not bigger — as “Concord” was.
First, a brief bit of background for the unfamiliar: The “Suicide Squad” is a ragtag group of anti-heroes from the DC media titan, forced into government servitude (they all have bombs implanted into their necks), and deployed on missions that were “suicidal” — hence the name — or too morally dubious for the likes of Superman and Batman.
The video game takes that idea to the maximum, as is observed in the title, with the anti-heroes waging war against a corrupted version of the Justice League.
Well, those narrative stakes were completely neutered in the final update.
Because, as it turns out, “Suicide Squad” all but aped the age-old trope of “it was all a dream” with the game’s flaccid conclusion.
The final update reveals — via static animated stills you can watch below — that whatever narrative heft that would’ve been included with actually killing the Justice League was utterly lost because it turns out you were just fighting clones this whole time.
Seriously:
As one post on social media platform X remarked, “The terrible storyline of Suicide Squad Kill the Arkhamverse is completed with a 2 minute motion comic that brings Batman back. They couldn’t even conclude the game with a 3D cutscene? This is truly the worst DC video game ever made. Good riddance to this abomination of a game.”
You would think that a video game looter shooter based on one of the most popular superhero IPs in the world would be an easy slam dunk, but the game came under intense scrutiny for a myriad of reasons.
While some are more game-related concerns — the game’s controls and microtransactions have both been criticized — are certainly valid, they generally pale in comparison to the more narrative-related gripes with “Suicide Squad.”
And yes, far-left “woke”-ism was a big part of it.
One of the most controversial segments from the game is when protagonist Harley Quinn unceremoniously kills Batman. For a number of reasons, fans were livid with this choice, including the absurdity of how easy it was for Batman — perhaps the most plot-protected character in fiction history — to be killed by a girl boss.
If only that was the game’s only issue.
All of these negative elements combined to create a game that lost Warner Bros. (the parent company of DC) a whopping $200 million, according to PC Gamer.
That means that the game has somehow managed to deeply burn both fans and financial investors — making it the poster child of the “go woke, go broke” adage.
According to Forbes, despite the monumental failure of “Suicide Squad,” Warner Bros. plans on continuing to make games in the “Arkhamverse” (which is what fans call the DC world started in the “Batman: Arkham” video games, and which includes “Suicide Squad.”)
As a fan, this writer would love for another good Batman game (the “Arkhamverse” is a fantastic quadrilogy that any fans of video games or Batman should play) to exist.
He would love it even more if it’s a good Arkham game not besieged by incessant far-left ideologues.
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