Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Already Discounted, Fans Switching to Arkham Knight

Video Games

If you wanted more evidence that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is a disaster, you can now buy it cheaper than its original price. Discount video game retailer Green Man Gaming is selling Kill the Justice League for 18% off for both the standard and deluxe editions, while CDKeys has it for 25% off the standard edition and 31% off the deluxe edition. These numbers are a bit skewed, as the sites have different retail prices for the game, so their percentages are different – Green Man Gaming lists the retail price as $69.99 for the standard and $99.99 for the deluxe, while CDKeys has them as $75.59 and $113.39. These are both for the Steam version, which lists the game with Green Man Gaming’s prices, so I’m not sure why CDKeys has it as being more expensive. Regardless, a video game shouldn’t be sold at a discount a week after its release.

But if you look at the numbers, it isn’t all that surprising, because gamers are not only abandoning Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, they’re playing a different Batman game to wash the taste out of their mouths. According to Fandomwire, Arkham Knight, the fourth game in Rocksteady’s Batman series (although they weren’t involved with the third game, Arkham Origins), saw a 20% increase in gamers playing it on their PlayStation accounts before Kill the Justice League launched. This was likely to refresh fans’ memories of where the story left off, as Kill the Justice League takes place in the Arkham universe (for some strange reason). More interesting is what happened after Suicide Squad’s launch, when there was a 25.94%  increase in gamers playing Arkham Knight, probably because they didn’t like Kill the Justice League and wanted to play a better Batman game.

This is a fiasco for Rocksteady and a complete rejection of their new game. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is so bad that it’s being sold at a discount a week after its release, and people are replaying older games to get their DC fix. I don’t think the studio has said much since Suicide Squad hit, and that’s probably a good idea. What could they possibly say that would help them save face? When your best move – aside from silence and seclusion – is to admit your game is a bomb and apologize in just over a week, you’ve failed more spectacularly than when Disney back-seated Indiana Jones for an obnoxious girlboss. The hits keep coming for the entertainment industry, and with Disney now preparing a big push into video games, you wonder if anyone will learn a lesson from this debacle. My money’s on no.

Thanks to Yellowflash for his videos that alerted me to the discounts and game-ditching.