Warner Bros' Wonder Woman cancellation has left me perplexed

Yesterday, Warner Bros. Games decided to close three game studios. Among them, Monolith who were responsible for the successful LOTR: Shadow of Mordor and had been working for three years on Wonder Woman. Monolith was a studio of 30 years, established in 1994, working through some major games, loved by many. Not only did the studio pull off one of the best games based on The Lord of the Rings, developing the Nemesis system - so good that it was patented by Warner Bros. - but they also smashed out the brilliant F.E.A.R. series and the horror gem Condemned.

Those 30 years were brought to a screeching halt yesterday as Warner Bros. decided to pull the plug on the studio. Two other studios were also closed - Player First Games and WB San Diego - with Warner Bros. putting out a statement following the news breaking.

MultiVersus is one of several Warner Bros. games now cancelled

Before I get to the statement, I say this without any hyperbole, but this industry is genuinely crumbling, with thousands of talented creatives ending up without jobs simply because some CEO sits in a boardroom watching a line on a graph. I’ve written about this before, but seemingly, the trend isn’t going to change and, if anything, it’s only going to get worse.

The statement reads, “After careful consideration, we are closing three of our development studios – Monolith Productions, Player First Games and Warner Bros. Games San Diego. This is a strategic change in direction and not a reflection of these teams or the talent that consists within them.”

It continues, after mentioning the cancellation of Wonder Woman, “Our hope was to give players and fans the highest quality experience possible for the iconic character, and unfortunately this is no longer possible within our strategic priorities.”

‘Strategic priorities.’ I wonder what these are. Because the start of their statement said that Warner Brothers’ key franchises are “Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC and Game of Thrones”. Their words, not mine. DC is in there. Wonder Woman was being lovingly created by a huge team of people for several years, and it would have provided DC Comics fans with a whole new adventure to experience. I would have assumed this was a ‘strategic priority’.

Hogwarts Legacy

In an email to staff, revealed by Polygon, JB Perrette, the CEO and president of global streaming and games for Warner Bros. Discovery, said that going forward, Warner Bros. would focus on “fewer but bigger franchises,” and that the company wants to “regain our credibility and swagger at producing great games”.

You know who makes great games? Great studios like Monolith. Jesus wept, what do creatives need to do to be taken seriously in this industry? The failures of Warner Bros. land squarely with their executives. It wasn’t Rocksteady Studio who so blindly pushed for live-service implementation in their Suicide Squad game. It wasn’t the team at Player First Games, now closed, who pulled the plug on MultiVersus, despite the success of the game. Furthermore, it sure as hell wasn’t them who thought it a good idea to pull the game from sale for a year, snatching all the wind from its sails.

Perrette has the gall to say that Warner Bros. had a “disappointing 2024” whilst taking no accountability. Neither did David Zaslev, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, and I didn’t see an apologetic statement from David Haddad, who left the company earlier this year, who oversaw that “disappointing 2024”.

Suicide Squad

In that email to staff, Perrette said, “Getting our swagger back happens one high quality game release at a time, and our financial credibility gets rebuilt one fiscal quarter at a time.” Oh goodie, the developers are out of a job, but at least you’ll have your swagger. This will come via a refocused approach to the company’s mobile market, apparently bolstering the profits. Financial credibility, I assume, means making the shareholders happy, rather than allowing creative freedom for their development teams. For the record, Warner Bros. Discovery is worth $26 billion.

This news comes just two days before an earnings call to those same shareholders where, I’d imagine, the closure of these three studios will be seen as necessary for growth. Because as long as the line goes up, right? Meanwhile, the creatives who poured their time and energy into what could have been some truly brilliant games have to tell their spouse that the mortgage payment can’t be made, or pick up their kids from school and pretend that life is continuing as normal.

This all comes hot on the heels of a report from Bloomberg that charted the mismanagement of Warner Bros. Games, and follows 2024, a year which saw tens of thousands of layoffs across the video game industry.

Warner Bros. Games

I genuinely don’t know what has to change, aside from this insistence that growth is the only determining factor of success. Games need time to gestate, they need millions of hours of work, they need courage, they need people who know games.

And I can see the social media reactions of, “Well, why don’t these developers go independent?” With what money? If Warner Bros., who has literal billions in the bank, doesn’t want to make great games, then how is an out of work developer going to make a splash? Who can they convince to invest?

What’s utterly laughable is that the industry is more lucrative than ever. It’s just that some company CEOs aren’t satisfied with being behind the likes of Rockstar Games, or Fortnite. They’re not satisfied with making some money, they have to make all of it, and screw the people who make the products that earn it in the first place.

And what happens in a year, or five years, when Warner Bros. or another company wants to make the next big ‘high quality’ game? Who is going to make it when you’ve fired all the talented developers? I hate to repeat myself, but Monolith had 30 years experience. If I had to pick a development team to make a game, they’d be on the list. Nevermind … Thank god the numbers on the spreadsheet will be in the positive after churning out another Game of Thrones mobile game, eh?