A number of QA workers at Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Batman: Arkham studio Rocksteady have been laid off over the past month or so, a new report has alleged.
Rocksteady staff have apparently told Eurogamer that the studio's QA department has been slashed from around 33 staffers to about 15 over the past few weeks. Eurogamer says the staff members told them that Suicide Squad was directly cited as a reason for these layoffs.
As a reminder, Suicide Squad publisher (and Rocksteady parent company) Warner Bros declared back in February that the live-service looter shooter had underperformed compared to its expectations for the game. In May, the publisher said the game was a major factor in a $200 million revenue drop.
The Eurogamer report goes on to say that it's not just Rocksteady QA being hit by layoffs, and that one employee was "told they were being made redundant in the middle of their paternity leave".
According to Eurogamer, Rocksteady management has acknowledged "that product quality will now suffer as a result" of these layoffs. Rocksteady staff also told the site that the remaining staff at the studio would now be "shouldered with more work" (that's a Eurogamer quote, not a Rocksteady quote).
It seems like a pretty bizarre decision to me to cut staff at Rocksteady's QA department in response to the failure of Suicide Squad.
After all, I don't think it's their fault the game flopped; surely, whoever insisted Suicide Squad remain on its live-service course, despite that pretty obviously being a hugely unpopular decision, would be a better point of scrutiny.
This news comes at what appears to be a rather inconvenient time for Rocksteady. If a recent LinkedIn employee listing is to be believed, the company is currently embarking on a new, as-yet unannounced project, which began development in June.
With the loss of many of its QA employees, it looks like Rocksteady will now have to work even harder to make sure that project's fully ready before it's released. Stay tuned for more on this and all other things Rocksteady.
