It feels like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has attracted nothing but skepticism since it was unveiled years ago, and that skepticism only grew more intense in the lead-up to the game’s launch. Unsurprisingly, that’s being reflected in not only its less-than-stellar critical reception (with Metacritic score of 62 at the time of writing), but also the number of players it’s attracting (or failing to).
At least on Steam, Rocksteady Studios and WB Games’ open world looter shooter has failed to attract a sizeable audience. As per SteamDB, upon its global launch on February 2, the game peaked at just 13,459 concurrent players on Steam.
Compared to the impressive numbers that other major recent releases like Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Granblue Fantasy: Relink, Tekken 8, and Persona 3 Reload have enjoyed – all of which are arguably significantly more niche products than a AAA game based on a DC property from the makers of the Batman: Arkham series – that’s quite a rough start for the live service shooter.
A closer comparison would be Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel’s Avengers, another superhero game that was widely criticized for wasting license with immense potential on a trend-chasing live service game. However, with an all-time peak of 31,165 concurrent players, Marvel’s Avengers’ peak is well over twice as high as Suicide Squad’s– so far, at least.
Meanwhile, Suicide Squad also seems to be faring markedly worse than WB Games’ own co-op open world superhero game Gotham Knights, which launches in 2022 to lukewarm critical reception, but enjoyed an all-time peak of 24,138 concurrent players.
In our review of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, we gave it a score of 5/10, saying, “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League isn’t the worst live-service title ever made, but its mediocrity is hard to deny, especially from a developer capable of so much more.” Red the full review through here.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Its first season of post-launch content will kick off in March, adding The Joker as playable character, with future seasons set to add more new bosses, playable characters, locations, and more.