Warner Bros. gaming division facing leadership fallout

It might not be surprising to hear that the head of Warner Bros. gaming division stepped down in January.

Lord of The Rings, Batman, and Game of Thrones all belong to WB and all are ripe for game adaptations. Despite this, WB has struggled to release a consistent crop of well-received titles and talented studios go years without launching a game. Given recent high-profile flops Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and MultiVersus, it was time for a change in the C-Suite.

So what is going wrong at WB?

Thanks to extensive coverage by Jason Schrier at Bloomberg, we now know the state of WB’s studios after the leadership (or lack thereof) from outgoing head David Haddad. Here are the biggest takeaways from Jason’s reporting:

For a long time, the undisputed biggest fish in WB’s tank was Rocksteady. After years of critical and commercial success with the Arkham franchise, they pivoted to the natural next step: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, a dead-on-arrival live-service. Poor alignment of the project and studio created a brain drain, with talent departing the company during the extended development. The game underperformed, and Rocksteady has abandoned additional seasonal content. Now Rocksteady aims to return to Batman, although any new Arkham game is likely years from coming to fruition.

However, more than one studio under WB works in the world of the Caped Crusader. WB Games Montreal developed both 2013’s Arkham Origins and 2022’s Gotham Knights. Gotham Knights notably started as a similarly misguided live-service push before changing course mid-development. At launch the game’s middling reviews point to the vestiges of this change, such as a tacked-on crafting system. WB Montreal’s next project was declined for featuring the relatively unrecognisable John Constantine, and its attempt at a game based on The Flash was cancelled due to the 2023 movie’s performance. Ever since, WB Games Montreal has supported other studios (notably Rocksteady). Now, it is in the early stages of pitching a new Game of Thrones game.

Meanwhile, Monolith Productions is rumoured to be struggling in another corner of the DC universe. Monolith, known for Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and its trademark ‘Nemesis System‘, had an original IP scrapped in 2021. Much of Monolith’s leadership departed after this, and the team was set to work on a Wonder Woman game. After being rebooted with a new director last year, Wonder Woman is evidently in trouble. With the length of the modern game development cycle, this setback puts Wonder Woman in risky territory. It isn’t certain the game will release, despite $100m having already been spent on development.

A few interesting trends emerge across these studios given their shared leadership. WB is doubling down on existing IP with passionate fanbases to drive sales. Second, despite live-service games being potentially disastrous for studios, Haddad was bullish on the idea of developing WB’s own Fortnite and subsequent license to print money.

With various studios releasing poorly-received projects attempting to fulfil the goal, Haddad’s period has one ironic noteworthy success story: Avalanche Software’s single-player RPG Hogwarts Legacy. Despite JK Rowling’s repeated attacks on the transgender community, haunting the game from its announcement, it outperformed all expectations. Even taking into account Hogwarts Legacy’s performance, the live-service dream was echoed as recently as last March. Given all the sales data now, it’ll be interesting to see if this leadership shake-up changes anything on this front.

Overall the division massively struggled under Haddad with numerous titles failing to generate sales after long and troubled development cycles. The report details his lack of industry knowledge, and seeming disinterest in making decisions that affected the studios he was supposed to shepherd. Instead of a unified vision, the period was defined by trend-chasing and a decay of institutional knowledge as top talent departed key positions across numerous studios.

David Zaslav loves cost cutting, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we see substantial changes and downsizing at these studios going forward despite Rocksteady already facing layoffs.

For once I’m just glad an executive in charge of these disastrous decisions seems to be being shown the door. Silver linings.