Less than a week after announcing the season 2 launch date, Rocksteady has announced a delay.
Back in 2016, Paul Lilly wrote one of my favorite PC Gamer headlines ever: "Watch this guy biff it in real life while rock climbing in VR." It came to mind again earlier today, not in regards to virtual rock climbing but Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which at the very last minute has slammed the brakes on the launch of its second season.
And I mean, the very last minute. Suicide Squad's second season, the one introducing Mrs Freeze, was set to go live on July 11, just two days from today. But it's not going to make that date.
"Update: Task Force X, we’ll be adjusting the release timing for the next season, #SuicideSquadGame Season 2 will now launch on July 25," the development team announced on Twitter. "Thank you for your patience."
But patience is clearly in short supply. Replies to the tweet are broadly negative, to put it politely, and not just because of the delay itself but because of a perceived lack of communication from developer Rocksteady. The studio said at the end of May that it was dropping weekly developer updates in favor of a more intermittent schedule "when we have big news to share about future content," but it really hasn't shared anything since beyond some small patch notes in June and the start date of season two, which was announced just five days ago ago.
That's an issue too: Imposing a delay five days after announcing the release date does not point toward a smoothly running machine behind this game. If anything, it's exactly the opposite, and it seems especially egregious coming as it does after a long series of missteps and misfortune including the lack of an offline mode, presence of Denuvo, and a $200 million loss for Warner.
Not many people are playing Suicide Squad right now—just a little under 500 on Steam, which is not where you want your big-budget live service superhero game to be—and the odds of Rocksteady turning it around are obviously not good. But any shot it might have at a turnaround is diminished by unforced errors like this. Quite frankly, even though WB Games has committed to finishing out Suicide Squad's "currently announced roadmap," I wouldn't be at all surprised if that position changes in the not-too-distant future.
I've reached out to WB Games for more information on the reason for the delay and will update if I receive a reply.
