Rocksteady may be going back to single player Batman, hints Bloomberg report

rockpapershotgun.com:

After years of making a live service Suicide Squad game that was roundly panned on arrival, the studio behind Batman: Arkham Asylum and its sequels are "looking to return to Batman for a single-player game", according to a report by Bloomberg. Rocksteady Studios hasn't said so publically, and Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier claims "the new project is years away from landing", so this is in no way official. But the possibility might come as a ray of hope to fans of the studio's open world Batman games.

The revelation is buried in a deeper report about the goings-on at publisher Warner Bros. Last month the company announced that head honcho David Haddad would be stepping down after 12 years in charge of the video games division. A resignation that seems like a head rolling for the bad business year Warner Bros had in 2024.

The publisher reportedly lost $200 million (about £156 million) on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League after it emerged from development hell as an "unambitious and old-fashioned" looter shooter. Or so said Steve Hogarty when he reviewed it for us.

"There’s a really excellent single-player action game hiding somewhere deep inside Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League," our Steve wrote, "calling out for help from beneath a few metric tonnes of loot-addled drudgery."

Now that excellent single player action game might actually break back out. If Rocksteady can manage to shake the sore history of upsets that have dogged the studio since the last entry in the Batman Arkham series. There were allegations of sexual harassment, for instance, which the studio argued were eventually addressed. Suicide Squad was delayed, and then delayed again. When it finally released it had server issues and owners of the "Deluxe edition" had the game weirdly complete itself for them. Then came the layoffs, which our sister site Eurogamer reported on in September 2024, with another round of job cuts becoming clear last month. None of this has likely been easy for