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Warner Bros Discovery Slashes Gaming Business, Closing Three Studios (engadget.com) 32

Posted by BeauHD from the not-so-fun-news dept.
According to Bloomberg (paywalled), Warner Bros. Discovery announced today that it is shutting down three gaming studios and canceling development of its planned Wonder Woman project. Engadget reports: Monolith Productions, Player First Games and WB Games San Diego will be shuttered due to a "disappointing 2024" for WB's gaming business, according to an internal memo from JB Perrette, the company's CEO and president of global streaming and games. [...]

According to the internal email from Perrette, WB's gaming efforts will be focused on four of its properties: Harry Potter (including Hogwarts Legacy), Mortal Kombat, the DC universe and Game of Thrones. "We need to make some substantial changes to our portfolio/team structure if we are to commit the necessary resources to get back to a "fewer but bigger franchises' strategy," Perette said.
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Warner Bros Discovery Slashes Gaming Business, Closing Three Studios More

Warner Bros Discovery Slashes Gaming Business, Closing Three Studios

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  • Wonder what happened with Monolith (Score:3)

    by UMichEE ( 9815976 ) on Tuesday February 25, 2025 @07:01PM (#65195087)

    I kind of wonder what happened with Monolith. They haven't released anything since 2017's Middle-earth: Shadow of War, which was reasonably well-received. I know the Wonder Woman game was recently cancelled, but it seems strange for a studio to spend 8 years without releasing a game.

    It's too bad to see them close as they gave us FEAR, Shadow of Mordor, AVP 2, and the No One Lives Forever games. They've got a long history of producing well-received games in multiple genres and then they just kind of went quiet after 2017.

    • Rocksteady is also a Warner Bros. subsidiary, and the story with them is that Warner turned them into a live service developer. They went from a development cycle of 3-4 years to taking more then seven for their live service game. It doesn't seem out of the question that something similar could have happened to Monolith.

      I hadn't realized this was that Monolith, of the LithTech Engine and Tron 2.0. This is sad, but... I had kinda thought that they were already gone.

    • Monolith is staffed by aliens from another dimension, where time runs slower. I'm sure they'll be back, they're just taking a break.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      Reading the tea leaves of the rest of WB, we can imagine that WB told its studios it wants a Fortnite/Destiny forever service game and anything they worked on had to be defined in those terms.
    • My guess is they've been passed around to work on other projects instead of being allowed to do their own thing. When a studio goes missing that's usually what happens. And electronic arts has a nasty habit of doing that to studios. It's one of the reasons EA games kind of suck. They will take a studio that doesn't work on a type of game and force them to do that. Like how they made bioware work on looter shooters and we got the forgettable anthem.

      EA desperately wants to commoditize game development so

      • EA desperately wants to commoditize game development so that the employees can be interchangeable cogs. That works just fine for Enterprise software but not so much for video games.

        It doesn't really work for Enterprise software either when there's something you need help with and the developing company is twelve generations of cogs away from any of the people involved in the original project and nobody at the company even knew that the function you're having issues with exists.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      I didn't know this company was still around. Loved AVP(2 only?), FEAR 1, NOLF series (not Contract JACK), etc.

  • "gaming efforts will be focused on four of its properties: Harry Potter (including Hogwarts Legacy), Mortal Kombat, the DC universe and Game of Thrones."

    I thought Wonder Woman was one of the DC superheroes.

    (well she was when DC were b&w comic books, before Lynda Carter came along)

    Yes I am old

  • There are people stuck in far worse situations.

    You're not them.

    You can choose what to do next.

    • Back in the day when my mom would come home and ruined dinner because she'd had a few too many to drink and she forgot it on the stove that was the excuse that would be tried it out, the whole starving kids in China thing.

      Just because somebody has it worse than me doesn't mean I have it better. I'm sick and tired of people who measure their quality of life in relative terms. Quality of life should be measured in absolutes. We shouldn't settle for a miserable existence just because we're not getting our
  • Five years of Crickets? Normally managers report often, and make changes when required. it is not hard to say other company is dong that - you do that. Seems miserable management. And if YOU can't then you get money from accepting bids from someone else more capable. I do accept these $500 plus video cards, ray tracing, has made stepping up hard. Having replaceable cogs is not possible . One thinks they dont have the cash to commit to 4K and the like. The best decision their managers should do, would be t

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