Warner Bros. delivers the first corporate numbers for this year. It became clear how much the anti-hero game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was also a financial disaster.
On May 9, 2024, the first quarter 2024 figures from Warner Bros. Discovery were released, providing financial insights into the company.
It becomes clear: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was not only poorly received by many players and was criticized for its monotonous gameplay with similar missions or a banal storyline (via GameStar). Financially, the DC game also caused significant drops in revenue.
How hard did Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League flop? Quite hard. For instance, David M. Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. stated in the earnings call that especially compared to the massive success of Hogwarts Legacy in 2023, Suicide Squad had a catastrophic release:
“Unfortunately, the studio’s Q1 financial results were overshadowed by the tough competition in games after Hogwarts Legacy performed brilliantly last year and Suicide Squad disappointed in Q1 in our Gaming Group.” (via finance.yahoo.com)
As CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels explained, the game contributed to yielding a full 200 million dollars less EBITDA in the first quarter compared to the previous year:
The decline of over 400 million US dollars in the first quarter compared to the previous year is primarily due to the very challenging competitive situation we faced in games, unlike the success of Hogwarts Legacy last year, combined with the disappointing launch of Suicide Squad last quarter, which we were impacted by, resulting in a 200 million dollar effect on EBITDA in the first quarter.
Gunnar Wiedenfels, source: IGN
EBITDA is an acronym that stands for “Earnings before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortisation”. This translates to: earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization of intangible assets. So EBITDA does not yet refer to profit. (via tagesschau.de)
Thus, according to the report, the adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter amounted to a total of 2.102 million US dollars. This represents a decline of 20% (excluding exchange rates) compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
Despite the negative opinions from players about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, MeinMMO author Niko Hernes also sees positive aspects in the game. You can read here in his opinion article why the shooter can still be fun despite all the criticisms: I played through the new DC game: Not a new Batman, but a fun loot shooter
