WB Games Kills Wonder Woman Game, Closes Monolith, Multiversus Studio and More

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Transcript

00:00Well, if you were like me and you thought Warner Brothers was in a rough spot after

00:03Suicide Squad killed the Justice League, crashed harder than a PC running crisis on a frigging

00:08potato buckle up because they've just taken a sledgehammer to three of their own studios.

00:13The latest casualties and what can only be described as a corporate bloodletting these

00:17last couple of years is monolith productions, Player First Games and WB Games San Diego.

00:23The reason money and most likely the complete mismanagement of a number of their titles.

00:29But let's just look at this, a $200 million black hole left by Suicide Squad killed the

00:33Justice League.

00:34It turns out nobody wanted to grind for loot in a game where Harlequin and the crew turned

00:37into Fortnite rejects fighting bullet sponge superheroes.

00:40On top of that, Warner Brothers, other hopeful multiplayer games like Harry Potter quit its

00:45champions hasn't exactly set the world on fire.

00:47I think we could figure that out the moment we saw the trailer.

00:50The result were some massive losses, some deep cuts, and a whole lot of talent suddenly

00:53unfortunately looking for new jobs.

00:56And while some people have come and left, let's just look at a couple of the games that

00:59they've released.

01:00For example, No One Lives Forever and its sequel, which were hilarious female based

01:04James Bond ripoffs.

01:06They were awesome and they were criminally underappreciated.

01:10Legal Limbo has also kept them from getting any proper remaster because of course it has.

01:14You look forward at 2000 and you have Fear, which was an awesome game with an incredible

01:19feel for its AI.

01:21You also had Condemned and the biggest hit really when you look back at their history

01:25is going to be Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor, which was 2014, which brought us the Nemesis

01:30system, a system so enjoyed by gamers that pretty much any title that comes out, somebody's

01:34like, Hey, let's put the Nemesis system inside of this.

01:37Then you also had Shadow of War 2017.

01:40They introduced the Nemesis system in these games, which were a driven mechanic that made

01:44the Orc Warlords remember you and adapt and change and come back for revenge like fantasy

01:49mob bosses.

01:50It was honestly one of the better systems that I've ever seen in a game to handle reactiveness

01:55between the player and the actual game itself and expand the gameplay.

01:59Then well, Wonder Woman or rather the announcement of Wonder Woman.

02:03This was all the way back in December 2022.

02:05The game was supposed to bring an original story as well as the Nemesis system into the

02:10DC universe proper, but a lot of this made about as much sense as throwing birds out

02:14of a window during an airplane crash.

02:17Honestly almost nothing about the game's development made any sense at all.

02:20The entire thing was rebooted in early 2024.

02:24Gamers were moved around and swapped and reports started to surface that the budget

02:27had already gone beyond 100 million when they really didn't have anything to answer for

02:32any of that money.

02:33And now the entire studio is gone.

02:35The same people who reinvented enemy AI redefined some horror FPS for a lot of gamers and gave

02:40us one of the best feelings of being James Bond, even though it was a weirdly odd rip

02:45off with a lot of comedic timing is now gone.

02:48This was originally reported by Jason Schreier on Twitter and other people ran with it.

02:53Butaku actually emailed them and got a response that said, we've had to make some difficult

02:57decisions to structure our development studios and investments around building the best games

03:01possible with our key franchises, which is Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC and Game of

03:06Thrones.

03:07After careful consideration, we're closing three of our development studios, Monolith

03:11Productions, Player First Games and Warner Brothers San Diego.

03:14This is a strategic change in direction and not a reflection of those teams or the talent

03:18that consists within them.

03:20What is interesting here is they state that DC is one of the ones they want to continue

03:24to push forward.

03:25So I think they just decided that Wonder Woman doesn't have the audience that maybe they

03:28thought it initially had and that the nemesis system, well, is more like the actual replication

03:34of games development.

03:35These days, bad times just keep coming back with new bad times added on and new special

03:40powers to ruin any ideas you have or, well, just financial instability and really dumb

03:45ideas bringing down the entire tower.

03:48What's interesting here, too, is Player First Games.

03:50They were founded in, like, 2019.

03:52They were a Los Angeles-based game studio, and it was very player-centric, or at least

03:56that's what they said.

03:57Their debut and the only release from them is actually MultiVersus, a free-to-play platform

04:02fighting game that came out in 2024.

04:05So five years, that's what we got.

04:08The game had a bunch of characters from different Warner Brothers franchises.

04:11It had Looney Tunes and Scooby-Doo.

04:12It had DC Universe.

04:13It had Game of Thrones.

04:14But by January 31st, they basically said MultiVersus would conclude after Season 5,

04:20which ran from February 4th, and it runs up until May of this year.

04:24Post that period, the game's going to be actually delisted from all digital storefronts

04:28and online functionality removed, though you will be able to play it offline, which, admittedly,

04:34any game that does this kind of thing should absolutely have this.

04:37When you look at MultiVersus, it actually didn't score that well either.

04:40Very few reviews.

04:41There just weren't a lot of people that seemed to be super interested in this.

04:44And it had its time where it sort of exploded or got important or got some eyes on overall

04:49ended up failing.

04:50And that was also a $100 million loss that was just attributed to MultiVersus from WB.

04:57So that cost them $100 million instead of making them anything.

05:01Now the other studio here is even more interesting to me, weirdly enough, simply because we never

05:05saw anything from them.

05:06This was Warner Brothers' game San Diego.

05:08Prior to the closure there, they had actually not released any titles at all.

05:13The studio was in the development phase of some projects, there were some rumors about

05:16what was going on and what games they were going to make, but they didn't make anything.

05:21So the idea of Warner Brothers looking at all these, looking at the losses of Suicide

05:24Squad, looking at the inability for them to put together Wonder Woman and come up with

05:28a cohesive plan resulted in them deciding, you know what, they're gone.

05:32And it's sort of like that old meme of, hey, if you make a good game, people will buy it

05:36and you'll do well.

05:37If you make a bad game, people won't buy it and you do poorly.

05:40Here you can make a great game or a series of amazing games and still not do well if

05:45you just have one or two failures.

05:47That's because games as a whole and development have absolutely changed.

05:51And when you see it, gamers are responding to not only the titles that they're getting,

05:55but the titles that are good that they have in their backlog or the titles that are excellent

05:59that they continue to play.

06:00It's very hard to get somebody to play a new game when their old games are fully fleshed

06:05out and a new game shows up and they promise some stuff down the road.

06:09Now one of the first things somebody's going to ask is what happens with the nemesis system

06:12and its patent.

06:13If you aren't aware, they patented this system and patents of this kind usually last about

06:1720 years.

06:18Will that go away?

06:19Of course not.

06:20Warner Brothers is going to keep a stranglehold on that son of a bitch and most likely try

06:24to figure out ways to put it into other games.

06:26Speaking of other games, we have seen somewhat kind of systems like nemesis systems.

06:30We've seen racing games with enemies that can show up and treat you a particular way

06:34or be your overall nemesis.

06:37They can't use that term, of course.

06:39And then we have titles like the Assassin's Creed titles that merge in things like the

06:43cultists into their games.

06:45There are very specific things in the nemesis system that are particularly patented and

06:49the developers I've talked to are pretty nervous about even coming close to that patent, not

06:54necessarily because of any kind of lawsuit that might come their way, but just the idea

06:58that it can be one more situation in which game development can be sort of slowed down.

07:03A problem that a lot of game developers are running into right now where the social stigma

07:08of something can end up being a problem where somebody says, oh, you're just copying the

07:11nemesis system, which admittedly, I like the nemesis system so much, I actually would like

07:15everybody to copy it.

07:16And I certainly don't like the idea of patenting a gameplay system.

07:20The same goes with other companies like Nintendo who do it.

07:23When you look back in particular at things like monolith productions, I mean, you have

07:26blood, you have show go mobile armored division.

07:29You are my personal hero, sir.

07:31One of the best robot battle games I've ever played.

07:34You have no one lives forever and no one lives forever to a spy in harm's way to incredible

07:40titles that really did start to push the genre a bit forward, even if they were quite loopy

07:45and then fear.

07:46These are games that, like I said at the starting of this, really did expand the feeling of

07:51having AI react to the player, even if later on we've had the developers talk about how

07:55many tricks they were actually using versus, say, real AI and then condemned, which I was

08:00a huge fan of on the 360.

08:02That was a title that when that came out as not necessarily particularly big horror

08:07fan, I was stunned at and then middle earth.

08:09Middle earth to me is one of those games where I love the systems in them, but I'm not a

08:13massive fan of middle earth when it comes down to it.

08:16I did like those games, but I wanted to see the nemesis system be used in particular to

08:22offer significant challenges for players in other games.

08:25That's a system that can be used in so many places.

08:28So seeing that shut down is devastating as well as anybody else.

08:31You don't want to see anybody lose their jobs.

08:33This many consistent losses from this many games and also a development studio that hadn't

08:39released anything at all.

08:40It's just a time where we're starting to see even titles and companies that do quite well

08:45still laying off people.

08:47And you see a situation like this.

08:49And honestly, the rumors have been around for quite a while that something was happening

08:52and it wasn't too surprising to wake up to see Jason Schreier reporting this and then

08:56other websites certifying that that information was true.

09:00And that is actually what's happening.

09:01So to close this out, monolith player first games and Warner Brothers San Diego shut down

09:06completely shuttered.

09:07Those people will some will be looking for jobs.

09:10Some may be reabsorbed.

09:11Wasn't too surprising.

09:12If you want new news and some upcoming reviews on some amazing games that are coming out

09:17as well as maybe some absolutely shitty ones.

09:19Stay tuned to the channel.

09:21Subscribe.

09:22Check out the patron.

09:23Peace out.

09:24Enjoy the rest of your week.

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