Uh oh, Suicide Squad's Steam launch numbers are less than half of the ill-fated Marvel's Avengers'
Both games feature live service elements that not many players want.
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Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League finally launched this week, but it's day one Steam stats are less than even Marvel's Avengers.
We all know that Marvel's Avengers didn't have a particularly good go of it. It wasn't particularly well received, the live service elements were frustrating, and it just ended up getting delisted. Now, after a long wait, Rocksteady's long awaited follow-up to Batman: Arkham Knight, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is here to repeat those same mistakes, again offering a live service title that would be better off as a four-player co-op game at minimum. Except, unfortunately for Suicide Squad, according to SteamDB, its day one launch stats are somehow worse than Marvel's Avengers.
According to SteamDB, Marvel's Avengers first full day on Steam netted it a peak of 29,916 players, whereas Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has capped out at 13,459, less than half of the Square Enix published title. It's not a reassuring sign for the game, but there are numerous reasons why the difference in numbers could be so large.
For one, there's the simple difference in brand recognition. Sure, the Suicide Squad is popular these days thanks to the DC films, but it still isn't at Avengers-level popularity. Marvel's Avengers launched a year after Avengers: Endgame, too, so it could have easily ridden the coattails of one of the most successful movies of all time. There's also a growing sense of live service fatigue, as every game under the sun is desperate to capitalise on a trend where players can only fit so many games they're meant to play constantly in their lives. And of course, this doesn't reflect console numbers either, as it could be performing better there.
Suicide Squad does have a range of post-launch content planned, including a Joker expansion that will bring in a version of the clown prince of crime from another universe, but whether that'll be enough to bring the numbers up is anyone's guess.