Batman: Arkham and Suicide Squad studio heads leave after 18 years with the company

Rocksteady Studios creative director Sefton Hill and studio director Jamie Walker have announced that they're leaving the company, 18 years after founding.

Hill and Walker will officially leave the company at the end of 2022 to "begin a new adventure in gaming" - though there are no details on what that adventure might be just yet. Darius Sadeghian, who has been with Rocksteady since 2015, will take over as studio product director. Nathan Burlow, who has been with the company since its founding in 2004, will take over the role of studio director.

"Our decision to leave Rocksteady was emotional to say the least," Hill and Walker say in a joint statement posted to the studio's official website. The pair do not explain why they're leaving, but they talk about their pride in Rocksteady, its employees, and the game's they've built, and express their thanks to fans.

Hill and Walker worked together in the 90s at Argonaut Games, best known as the studio which created the original Star Fox with Nintendo, and brought several other Argonaut veterans with them at the founding of Rocksteady in 2004. Rocksteady's first game, a shooter called Urban Chaos: Riot Response released for PS2 and the original Xbox in 2006, met with mixed response. But the company's second project was Batman: Arkham Asylum, a critical and commercial success in 2009 that instantly spawned one of gaming's most beloved modern franchises.

It remains to be seen what Hill and Walker's departures mean for the studio, but their leaving just a few months before the planned spring 2023 launch for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is certainly raising eyebrows. Suicide Squad will be the first release for Rocksteady since 2016, and that'll mark an unusually long stretch of time between launches for a major studio. It's also worth noting that Rocksteady is a subsidiary of Warner Bros., which has seen plenty of corporate upheaval over the past several years.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League had previously been due to launch in 2022, but the delay to the current release window was announced back in March. We've seen little of the game since that announcement.

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