The Decline Of Rocksteady Games - How A Studio Was Doomed
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ย. 2024
- This used to be one of my favorite video game development studios. They created amazing games like Batman Arkham Asylum, Batman Arkham City and Batman Arkham Knight. Sadly, they are now being hit with a lot of layoffs, mostly affecting employees who just did their jobs, because the management at this studio refused to take any responsibility for their poor decision making. #batman #batmanarkham #gaming
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This is a very sad situation. I would say they brought it on themselves, but it's only the people at the bottom clocking in and doing their jobs that are going to feel the impact of it. The management has now left to start a new company and is being widely praised. We'd love to see you on our other channels, all of which are in the description, or on our store cosmobunny.shop where you can use code DJAY123 for 10% off your first order. We appreciate you.
What a shame the people who made the choices behind the game aren’t being punished but the ones in charge of developing the game doing all the manual work are the ones being punished like wth
Corporate America in a nutshell
@@BrandonJames2016 they will be punished. The company lost 200 million. That's not something you can brush off like nothing
@@Joetaku666how will they be punished though? The founders left, they took a good chunk of staff with them who quit Rocksteady and now they are at a different company which is already being offered deals according to multiple business reports. It seems like they're not getting any punishment.
@@andyowski1515 I was referring to higher ups in WB being punished.
@@Joetaku666 Oh they might be. I guess I'm unsure. David Zaslav oversees a lot of this and he will never punish himself. Maybe management under him will be.
God, that McDonald’s analogy is just perfect for what happened at Rocksteady and how so much of corporate management works.
Yep and then occasionally you'll get some worker who gets pushed too far and has a screw loose who shows up with a weapon or something that ends up on the news but they're always the bad guy in that situation.
@@visionary1138Well, there can be more than one bad guy. Just because you are mistreated does not mean you can’t be evil yourself.
@@spencerr.9299 Sadly not to the media they'll just say the employee was evil and that the poor company was wronged. It's all about where the money is.
Sort of. Those "managers" ain't gonna last long though, because the money loss falls on them too.
@@visionary1138 Well, they are A bad guy in the situation. The problem is that they are then used as a scapegoat, to take attention off of the other bad guys. Unfortunately, when that happens, it is the obvious evil that people are going to see, which takes the attention off the real problem, so they end up helping the people upon which they wanted vengeance.
The solution? We keep on exposing them, as often as we can, and as loudly as we can, until the media is forced to take notice. Also, elect politicians who are anti-corporate and pro-worker. Such politicians are very rare, so when they do pop up, and their position is genuine (and backed up by their voting record, when possible), get out the vote for them!
This is how it happened, this is how the Rocksteady died.
What a shame that Rocksteady couldn’t become the Rockstar of superhero games…
Even Rockstar is kinda dropping that ball. People will forget when GTA 6 comes out but Rockstar has cared more about Shark Cards and GTA Online for years now.
@@Imadeyoumadlol Let's not forget the GTA Trilogy remastered such a lazy port. Both on Rockstar and honestly I worry about gta6 we know where Rockstar priorities are. I mean look at Read Dead 2 great game unfortunate online didn't get the care that gta online does cause shark cards. Normally PC mods $ exist but when mods effect bottom line. Not mention Bethesda trying to charge for mods.
Rockstar (with the exception of RDR2) has fallen off big time too. Not as bad as Rocksteady but still a fall from grace nonetheless. Shark cards and GTA Online is all they care about. Truly sad.
@@ImadeyoumadlolRockstar isn’t the same Rockstar from 10-15 years ago. I believe Rockstar makes the best quality games still but you better if you get one GTA and one RDR in a 10 year span. When GTA 5 came out I was happy for the initial online support but by 2020 it was enough.
WB should be in the Guinness book of world records for bad choices.
Worst part about this is that Sefton Hill & Jaime Walker the two heads who were in charge of the game for most of it, are getting off scot-free while those who remained at Rocksteady took the fall.
They literally left the remaining employees as canon fodder.
Or they were driven off by Sweet baby represitiatives!
According to CD project red they can cause lots of drama!😅
Man 2024 is the worst year for the gaming industry 🤦🏾♂️
@@TheBlackOtaku lay offs happen all the time in all types of jobs.
It ain't special when it happens to game devs
Well once DEI is not allowed in games anymore,that may change!😊
@@Herowebcomicswhat is that even supposed to mean dude?
I said it in another comment but this is the complete opposite of a situation like where Satoru Iwata was head of Nintendo and he took a huge pay cut to keep his employees around during hard times at the company. I know there are other Eastern companies like Konami that did the opposite, but it seems like a lot of Western companies follow what Rocksteady did here. They will just attack their lower workers and blame them.
Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker deserve way more blame for this whole thing than the internet has given them.
They quit before they could get the blame, they knew what they were doing.
@JohEl777 they made the smart decision
@Joetaku666 no they didn't lol. They made ssktjl which was a pretty dumb decision.
@DDobs12 Oh, so now the new story is "the whole game and premise was all Seftons fault and he just left to screw people over"
You do realize they probably left because they could have tried to make the game better but WB said "no make the live service game with shitty writing"
@Joetaku666 new story? Damn you can really take a whole studio down that throat of yours. Stop defending a shitty company with shitty people. You'll wear out those kneepads you seem to love wearing
Sweet baby has caused so much damage to the gaming community!
But with Rockstedy's destruction, we learned valuable lessons!
Say yes to Sweet baby and you make a game like Suicide squad!T.T
Say no and you could make a game like Black Myth Wukong!$.$
The QA department was cut in half. The people who just make sure the game works. None of this is their fault.
No one who worked on asylum, city and knight is still there
The idea of Suicide squad came from Rocksteady and the people who came up with it abandoned the ship and let the employees suffer. That Mcdonald example is perfect one. The sad thing is that Rocksteady could have turned it around by at least doing decent updates with skins. People from Rocksteady are now working on the Hogwarts legacy director's cut instead of this game.
There is a lack of fucking empathy because the people that are talking shit. Don’t know the people who made this game so of course they’re gonna talk the way they want.
Sadly from everything going on with Rocksteady this doesn’t surprise me at all with the layoffs here with WB Games direction and SB Stink pushing both the full blame for what happen overall for my thoughts
The game shouldn't even have released ever since it's reveal in last year's game awards I think at least a few decent amount of people knew that this game was going to fail
I hate to people lose their jobs, but rocksteady did it to themselves. Its not for going woke, its for pissing in the faces of the fans which made them a household name in gaming.
You either die a hero, or life long enough to see yourself become the villain.
I mean... the management did it TO the employees. Idk what they're really supposed to do in that situation. Say you just put your hands up and say I ain't making that, then you're fired right away.
@@BigBlackBarret Yeah I suppose they could try to put up a stink in the office but then they're just replaced immediately. It's a problem with every creative team venture because it's not done by committee so even if the group under the management is right the managers can fire them and get someone else. What's ironic is the people did their jobs and the managers ran away and then the people just doing their jobs paid the price. It's a very Western way to handle things. It's opposite of someone like Satoro Iwata taking a huge paycheck decrease to keep his Nintendo staff around.
@@visionary1138 Yeah you can shop around for another job but that's about it yo. Otherwise you're kinda stuck and then get blamed by everyone later and fired anyways I guess.
The miserable fall of Concord and SSKTJL might actually tell other studios to stop making shit games. That's why people are saying deserved
Completely agree, though I feel bad for the people who were fired that didn’t do anything wrong
To see what WB has done with the Batman license, from Gotham Knights to Suicide Squad has been absolutely shocking to say the least. Rocksteady practically reinvented and set the standard for the modern comic book video game adaptation. Arkham Asylum and Arkham City may very well be my overall favorite Batman interpretation of all time. Arkham Knight to this day looks absolutely breathtaking. Games packed full of content. Games that pushed what a comic book adaptation video game could be capable of doing. All the while being extremely faithful to its source material and served as a love letter to everything that made it great. Suicide Squad in particular is going to go down as nothing less than a cautionary tale of what NOT to do with an IP and what NOT to do to please fans. I have to hope and pray that someday, Rocksteady finally has enough people to push the story driven, detail oriented experience again. Game like Suicide Squad are the poster child of the brainless cash grab that was once the complete antithesis of what Rocksteady once stood for.
As I finish up my replay of the Arkham trilogy, I'm feeling real bummed about what could have been.
Imagine if the recent games were all Batman Arkham titles and good:
Gotham Knights? - Arkham Legacy; Batfamily deals with Court of Owls post Arkham Knight, tease of Bruce being alive as secret ending
SSKTJL? - Arkham Savior; Bruce comes out of hiding to save the Justice League from Brainiac
Arkham Shadow? - Aside from being VR, nothing needs changing, a game focusing on Bruce's younger years
Arkham Beyond - A game based around Damian or Terry becoming Batman Beyond. Leave open for sequels.
Just think, in another timeline there's an Arkham Saga with 2 Trilogys, a spinoff duology and the door left open for more
Listen I'm not a corporate enthusiast, but recently amongst fandom, I see the corporations higher on the hierarchy being used as a scape goat for literally everything and I think it's seriously a reason why crap like this will keep happening. If the game was exactly as is but the narrative pre and post release were different, it would perform a lot better, and I bring this up because Rocksteady studios, in my honest opinion, is a lot to be blamed.
When you look at a game like Multiversus, another WB product that has outrageous monetization, there is still a sizable player base for that game. Yes one is F2P and the other is not, but Rocksteady already has an established reputation whilst Player First Games does not. So the only thing that can possibly deter these games' results are what the discourse were before and after the games came out and it is night and day. This is important because the decisions that gave rise to such discourse must be tracked accurately or else such decisions will be made again when whomever is assigned to the next game.
We always want the creatives/development studios in charge and have the head operatives out of the entire process, but when these creatives/developers mess up, the blame is not nearly as harsh as it is on the corporations higher in the corporate hierarchy. If you track all the information about the disastrous creative decisions made with the game, WB did not contribute to what people are most insulted by. It wasn't WB who ordered a Suicide Squad game, those plans were long scrapped from WB Games Montreal- Rocksteady decided to transform the shooter they were working on into a Suicide Squad game and pitched it to WB, which they obviously accepted, but WB is getting the full fault of it. It wasn't WB who wanted this poor line up of characters and have the Justice League be the bad guys that you kill in the game in the most disrespectful way. WB should instead be blamed for the deadlines that probably forced repetitive game design, budget, and things of that nature. But most certainly not the creative decisions themselves.
I think of it like Assassin's Creed I, where the popular opinion is that it is a repetitive game. Literally one of the game developers' sons told him that the game was boring, and they added side missions last minute. But despite such issues, the game still had a fanbase because it did not make poor creative decisions that Rocksteady made, and time and time again I have seen that players are lenient on technical faults and limitations.
I know in this video you mention that Rocksteady and their ex-owners/new development studio is heavily to blame, but it is not highlighted nearly as much as WB getting blamed. I get that it is terrible that people are losing their jobs, it's just sad as heck man. But why is the fact that this is not being weighed on the creative studio level not being discussed? It's like you know you're making a controversial game and that if your game ends up netting cost instead of profit, your employees will be the ones to suffer. But as long as you're doing something "daring" and "brave" by having Harley Quinn and Wonder Woman be treated as they are while everyone else gets treated the way they did, then it is worth it? The leaders of these studios are not looking out for their employees and are instead pursuing their personal interests and fulfillments. Ultimately the corporations higher on the corporate hierarchy are supplying the capital and hence are the ones to make any financial decisions including cutting jobs, but these development studios know this as a fact and just don't care, or at least don't care enough about weighing their opportunity costs seriously. If they did, this issue would not be re-occurring as much as it is, and I think it's time we call be honest in our call outs.
In DC Fandom, I'm seeing it with the comics, movies, and games. WB is being blamed for it all, but if you track the stories accurately, it is nothing short of dishonest and disproportional blaming.
No more scape goating to the big corporations. Creatives need to be called out more as well.
I blame the janitor at WB f that guy
I have a feeling that the people who got laid off might try to get a job at hundredstar.
I feel that issue was with the founders of rocksteady. 1) They do a great batman game, 2) they do an even better batman game and then, they said: "Oh I think I can do this without these people (Paul Dini)", then the game was good but began the feeling of "OK. I did this really great work, now I can do what I always wanted (shooter looter). I'll do it because it's what I want and doesn't matter what others say. It's my dream". WB as usual said, sounds profitable and some (fewer) people are ok with it. Then a Snyderverse happened where they (WB and the founders) saw that this was not going to be a success, and pressed panic button.
I've seen a couple of times businesses (two software companies and one manufacturing) that made only one mistake and that was the end of their carreer. They were very good at something they don't like it 100%. They got success and the they tried to do their dream, only to realize they're not good at it, and failure happens.
Very well said losing Paul Dini was huge butt Rocksteady got too big for its own britches the key to the series was feeling like the Batman and original writing not rehash Rock Steady couldn't write their selves out of a paper bag they showed that and all the quantity and no quality with Arkham Knight
6:56 as y’all see, Harley sexually assaulted “Deadshot”. If the roles were reversed, all Hell would’ve broken loose.
To be honest Arkham city was my favorite All time of video game because of it not only shown some knowledge of Batman but it actually shown some creativity and highly respects from dc fans and batman fans like us included, rocksteady is that company gives a damn of his fans and gives anyother creative ideas towards it of making a good game despite its flaws in the Batman trilogy but inspired other fans to become better to game developers like rock steady and Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox,etc but nowadays after since sweet baby inc feels more like everyone an sickly fever dream and i remember watching two of the trailers like Gotham knights it looks decent and kill the justice league gives me more hype and expectations for it to succeed but now turned into feels like expired milk that has been sitting in a fridge for 6 years and when you tasted it feels godawful the taste of disappoint and missed opportunity when see the trailer and now playing the game.
Suicide Squad should be the new laughingstock of the DC universe if WB is using it to destroy the Arkhamverse. They ruined the DCEU and now they’re going to ruin Rocksteady.
I'm not a businessman and have no experience in a position of authority but I have seen two popular websites where similar things happened behind the scenes and because the higher ups refused to do anything to try to fix their mistakes until it was too late, their websites are no longer in business. In case anyone is wondering which websites I'm talking about, they are Channel Awesome and Rooster Teeth with both of them shutting down a few months ago due to the amount of problems that they refused to take responsibility for until there was nothing they could do. I'm not saying Warner Bros games is going to go the same way that those two sites did but they might come very close to the edge of shutting down for good if they don't get their act together soon.
When their bosses decide to go into a direction, ie online service/Mircotransaction, that most gamers rarely play most of the time the end result is poor storyline, unnecessary retcons, character personality changes, to unwanted grinding to unlock characters that were supposed to unlocked already due to the season pass and so on.
I mean check out angry joe’s review about the gameplay and see the results there. They go from a single action player game that made, no set the gold standard for superhero games to come to an online live service only game that nobody asked for.
Now hold on there's at least 5 players who asked for this game. Probably aren't more than that though.
@@Imadeyoumadloland that’s fine. If others like this and say they this is what they wanted then more power to them. However at the rate that WB has several bad decisions under their belt, especially with the financial hole they are in it is only a matter of time before this ends up like squarenix avengers game.
@@kamenrangerzeo8251 I think it was a joke cause he just said 5 people lol
This is sad an depressing in my opinion
I hate the phrase "They're just doing their jobs" because that has led to so many atrocities throughout history. If the "minions" never followed the orders of the "tyrant", then "tyranny" would never exist.
The fall off gotta be studied in schools
I’m not buying the whole story Jason Schreier wrote blaming Sefton and Jamie. If you’ve ever heard the story of the Saints Row reboot, and how there ended up being way too many cooks in the kitchen, and how that franchise was ultimately ruined by a few ppl who knew nothing about it and had nothing to do with its past success, you’d have a pretty good idea on what could’ve made Sefton and Jamie leave. We already know Sweet Baby Inc was brought on as consultants, and they made up the vast majority of the writing team in the end credits, including Kim Belair, the co-founder of SBI herself, as the lead writer. Fact: 10 outta 10 woke liberals hate Batman bc he’s a rich white man, beating up on those poor, poor villains, so how do you really think that went over? The real question is, if Sefton and Jamie really just cut and run, why would so many old Rocksteady employees go to work for them at HundredStar Games, as was stated in that Polygon article? I guarantee the ppl Jason Schreier interviewed had fuck all to do with most of the Arkham trilogy, if any at all. Jason Schreier does nothing but defend the type of ppl who hate gamers, and will continue to lose money and tank companies in their attempts to “own the chuds.” I hate politics, I hate the extremists on both sides. I’m just stating what is blatantly obvious from a sensible centrist POV.
They need to make a damn good game to get out of this situation. It's a shame that the guys who put them into this situation got away scott free.
Oh geez. I never thought something like this would come. Not surprised. Also Concord suffered a similar fate.
Sefton hill was the visionary for this game and bailed out before its release and let his peer's take the fall.
And this prospective never made any sense. If it was his voice from the start and nothing was compromised, why would he jump ship? And before we start quoting Bloomberg's article, remember that all of the testimonies in that writing come from people who want to keep their jobs-they don't want to claim responsibility for any failures.
To accept SSKTJL as canon is fundamentally absurd: at best, it's a poorly written farce or spoof on the Arkhamverse, of a type that would never be taken seriously as canon in any other IP's universe. It would be like if someone kept insisting that the Star Wars Christmas Special was canon just because Lucasfilm was involved in its creation and it starred most of the main cast.
Whoever wanted to make Suicide Squad a live service, it's their fault. A co-op looter shooter honestly doesn't sound like the worst fit for the Squad, but live service is almost always a death sentence.
Arkham Orgins was a very solid game imo, the others just set the bar so high its difficult to match them in quality
Eh. I'm not going to blame Sefton Hill because I don't know his side of the story. I'm not going to take some random devs "truth" in a one-sided mud slinging competition. I wish Hundred Star Games does better, but I can't imagine they're in the best hands since their next game is a Microsoft game. But I do imagine people left with Sefton Hill because they had a good reason to.
Im wondering if WB allegedly hates all women for firing a women while shes on Maternity leave
They had to do that to prevent being accused of being woke hasn't worked so far
Bro it’s a great thing we have Arkham shadow
Seeing the difference between Arkham and SS really shows how much they lost the narrative. This goes for other developers too. Just make a great single player game with maybe a co op option. People will buy it and play it. Live service really feels gimmicky and lacks substance. And now everyone is paying for it when player counts quickly tank.
The day Rocksteady and WB Montreal decided to go Woke with these games and getting involved with Sweet Baby Stink was the end .
I disagree its the oppoiste of woke, they wanted to be edgy and cool,
I know you def don’t remember me but I used to watch all of your og vids like 4 years ago and it’s nice to be back on my old account and see ur still uploading
Sidenote: is this Batmobile map in the game???
While I agree with most of your points I have huge doubts that the blame is to be placed on the former heads of the studio and not WB who are notorious for not giving a shit about their movies, games, directors, or staff. Like do you really think that Sefton Hill and Jamie walker willingly tanking their own company and then running away is more likely than them just jumping off a sinking ship once they realized WB has turned their project into a miserable decade-long fortnite catch up and theres nothing they can do other than leave or sit around and wait until its finished and then never be allowed to be in charge of a major game again? I understand feeling empathetic towards the people that are stuck on the sinking ship but being angry at the ones who got away is weird imo
To think what the Arkham series could have become. IMO arguably one of the top series of games I have ever played. Batman is legendary. Hoping we will get another game soon but depending on who the developer is I doubt we will ever see anything similar to these games again.
Bad decisions are made upstairs, by the people who don't know what has to be done🤷♂️
Rocksteady Cooked
Is cooked*
The game makes the greatest gaming sin of all: It's boring.
If you wanted to make a suicide squad game do that. But why did it have to be a looter shooter Live service.
Could the 'Person' on Mat/Pat Leave, sue the Company for 'Wrongful Dismissal'??
They should be able to but a lot of the time the company finds a way around it. This redundancy lingo is a great example where they act like they aren't firing you.
Such a fall from grace for Rocksteady Studio.
Problems like WB Ubisoft EA Rockstar start the top. Tho they arent the 1st dominoes to fall once the $ goes dominoes start a reaction afterall until the complete collapse capitalism at work. Tho there are acquisitions, golden parachutes, etc.
Also, you’re just upset that SS: KTJL doesn’t have Yasuke in it, your favorite fictional character.
This isn’t Assassin’s Creed.
The workers need to join a union
Good riddance, Rocksteady. This is what you get for pandering to the woke.
Exactly, the fact that this game is clearly woke is definitely its most unforgivable sin
Nice
XD! Empathy is earned in my book for people I actually know dude. Im not a heartless prick but they did this to themselves and u are basically playing defense for a shit company that let A DEI Group run them into the ground. When u let Sweet Baby Inc anywhere near your studio then u are fucked plain and simple.
Are we not gonna acknowledge the fact that deadshots red batman costume is fire and wasted on this game?
I was looking at comments of another video about this topic and all the comments were about how the people working on the project deserved to be fired and blacklisted and that wokeism, DEI, and feminism are the work of the devil. They don’t understand that you could be one of the best animators in the field and give years of your life to a project and because of bad mismanagement and school-grade writing and now you’re fired and have to either explain the bad product in your resume or hope that you can get work somewhere else and hope the same issue doesn’t happen again. It’s like cussing out a cashier because the store marked up the price of bananas wtf they gonna do give you an award and free groceries for speaking your mind? People fall for getting angry at the faces they see that the real problematic people get away hiding in the shadows.
I will be the one to say it… suicide squad isn’t a bad game, just riddled with bad decisions… making it Arkham, live service n the weird random loot parts of the game, other wise it’s ok, lil repetitive, a decent world, a quirky non serious bunch of characters, it works for that to not take it serious n take it as Batman Arkham, it’s not… it was a butchery of Batman n Kevin conroys Batman, hints y it was critiqued worse since he passed away some time after… its a decent product n I don’t blame rocksteady for the overall product although it should of been a different game like a aliens vs wackos type game
hi Jay
Didn’t the development team, aka “grunts” at the studio, say that they made the game they wanted to make? Why are you creating a false narrative where they were being “forced” to make something they didnt want to make? The ones who wanted to make it are being let go, that’s normal.
Also, every one of your videos bow has some type of discussion on how “wokeness” wasn’t an issue. Every time. Maybe you’re just ignoring obvious social patterns? We get it, you don’t *want* wokeness to be a factor. But it is. And you constantly denying it is bizarre and odd.
It no longer matters. Some employees left following the disastrous launch. Some left before the game got released.
@@murphykitty44 you’re weird
Sweet baby shit