Sorry, Rocksteady fans, but the Suicide Squad devs were never making a Superman game
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was always the plan.
Despite repeated rumours over the years, Rocksteady was never making a Superman game, no matter how bad you think Suicide Squad looks.
Look, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League doesn't look great. The foundations of the game don't look great, and to make matters worse, it has a whole heap of live service elements that it just doesn't need. Previous comments from Warner Bros Zaslav about adding live service elements to its biggest franchises certainly build a picture that suggests some execs came to Rocksteady telling them to make a live-service Suicide Squad game instead of a rumoured Superman game. But that just wasn't the case, and a new report from Bloomberg clarifies just why everyone was so sure the Batman Arkham series developer was making a Superman game.
The initial rumour came from Twitter user James Sigfield back in 2020, but speaking to Bloomberg in its report, he noted that he'd even admitted at the time he had been mistaken. "I corrected it in a later tweet, but it never caught on," Sigfield said. "The person that gave me the info got the studios mixed up." The mixup does make some amount of sense, Suicide Squad is set on Superman's own Metropolis, and he does feature in the game, just as an enemy.
Bloomberg further clarified some points on the order of events for Rocksteady following Arkham Knight, explaining that a Suicide Squad game was in the works at a different Warner Bros. owned studio, but it was cancelled in 2016, before the property was given to Rocksteady, who started work on the project in 2017. Post Arkham Knight, Rocksteady started work on its Batman VR game and a previously unreported multiplayer game in an original franchise, though that obviously hasn't seen the light of day, so who knows if it still exists.
Essentially, even if Warner Bros. did force live service elements onto Suicide Squad, it didn't kill off a Superman game - though I guess Superman still might die, given the upcoming game's subtitle.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is finally out next month, February 2, and will be available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.