Marvel’s Avengers, as we all know, didn’t exactly have a great time. It was not well accepted, the live service features were annoying, and in the end, it was just taken off the market. Now, after much anticipation, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Rocksteady’s eagerly anticipated sequel to Batman: Arkham Knight, is here to make the same mistakes, once more presenting a live service game that would be better served as a four-player cooperative adventure at the very least. Alas, Suicide Squad’s first launch statistics are, regrettably, poorer than Marvel’s Avengers, according to SteamDB.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League The peak number of Steam players is less than half that of Marvel’s Avengers, the other notorious live-service superhero game. According to data from SteamDB, an independent website that monitors many aspects of Steam, the number of players in Marvel’s Avengers reached an all-time high of 31,165 on September 5, 2020. This was the game’s highest point, reached 24 hours after debut. It is normal for the peak to occur so soon after introduction; in most situations, this is offset by significant updates or visibility on YouTube or social media.
Suicide Squad was 5000+ players short on the launch date compared to Avenger’s beta
But again, the day following its release, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League only had 13,459 gamers. To exacerbate the situation, 18,908 players were active during Marvel’s Avengers beta at its peak on Steam. Although this does not take into consideration users on other platforms, the comparison is nevertheless a further setback for the most recent game from Rocksteady Studios. It’s easy to see the similarities: in addition to other problems, both games’ live service components and currencies were disliked.
Marvel’s Avengers: Rise, Fall, and Fan Speculations
Three years after its release, Marvel’s Avengers would even close, costing publisher Square Enix $48 million in revenue in the first quarter of the game’s existence. In the meanwhile, fans conjectured that a live-service game akin to Marvel’s Avengers was initially planned as Rocksteady Studios’ next major undertaking following the Arkham games. The creators are said to have changed the game to make it more like Destiny 2 after it crashed.
The argument was expressed, if not explicitly, by the outrage against the trailers that showed the game’s several currencies and requirement for an ongoing internet connection. There was an almost 3:1 dislike-to-like ratio for trailers at the time. Anything negatives the game already had was compounded by sexual harassment whistleblowers, tone-deaf handling of Kevin Conroy’s last video game scene as Batman, and plot leaks.
Troubled Beginnings and Unexpected Glitches
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s initial reception was also lackluster at best, and the $100 Deluxe Edition was unable to provide early access as Rocksteady Studios discovered that a problem was causing players to get finished save files. They paid the impacted players $20 in in-game cash as compensation after taking the game down, which once more rendered it unusable even for lone players.
There is a lot of post-launch content planned for Suicide Squad, including a Joker expansion that will introduce a clown prince of crime from a different world, but it’s unclear if it will be sufficient to increase player numbers.
