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Warner Bros. Games has been going through a massive rough patch lately, with three of its studios – including Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and open-world Wonder Woman game developer Monolith Productions – all recently shut down. Now, in a new financial report, it's revealed that its revenue and spending is down compared to this time last year, which isn't a shock when it has "no releases" to speak of.
Spotted by PC Gamer, in Warner Bros. Discovery's results for the first quarter of the 2025 fiscal year (which cover the three months ending on March 31), the company notes that games revenue has "decreased 48% ex-FX" (excluding foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations). This, it says, is "due to the prior year release of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League compared to no releases in the current year quarter, as well as higher carryover from Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat 1 in the prior year."
Unsurprisingly, no releases means no big spikes of revenue, with continued sales of Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat 1 doing a bit more heavy lifting this time last year, alongside sales of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League when it released out of early access last February.
The game really didn't go down well with fans or critics – we gave it two and a half stars out of five in our Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League review – and it's been no secret that it didn't perform as well as Warner Bros. would have liked. In fact, it was previously stated by Bloomberg's Jason Schreier that the company "wrote off $200 million" because of it. Even so, it was obviously still able to offer more revenue than the company's blank slate of releases at the start of this year.
Warner Bros. Discovery also points to Suicide Squad when discussing its decreased "games content expense" compared to the same quarter last year, which is down by "66% ex-FX, primarily driven by the prior year quarter impairment related to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and lower games revenue in the current quarter."
This is telling of what an impact Suicide Squad had on the company's finances last year. It's worth noting that in a financial context, "impairment" is most likely referring to sudden large drop in an asset's value, a situation which requires companies to assess the difference between the value of something they'd previously accounted for versus its actual, current market value (thanks, Investopedia).
Basically, it sounds like Warner Bros. is referring to the fact that it lost a lot of money last year because of Suicide Squad not doing as well as expected, which it conversely isn't having to spend this year. In a way, that's a win, but obviously with the recent closures of Monolith Productions, MultiVersus developer Player First Games, and the mobile-focused WB San Diego, it doesn't seem like things are looking up for the company just yet.
