Warner Bros. Games has shut down three studios, including Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and WB Games San Diego. This follows the reports that the Wonder Woman game (which is now canceled) was in development trouble, not to mention the failure of MultiVersus, which will shut down soon.
Monolith Productions is by far the most storied developer out of all three. Founded in 1994, the studio released games like Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, No One Lives Forever, Tron 2.0, F.E.A.R., Condemned, and the Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor/War games. The latter was the last game they released back in October 2017. At The Game Awards 2021, they announced a Wonder Woman game featuring an original story and the studio's trademarked Nemesis system seen in the Middle-earth games. However, as mentioned in the aforementioned report, after all these years, the development was still nowhere near ready, and Warner Bros. Games (which recently replaced division chief David Haddad) must have decided to cut its losses instead.
The publisher has released the following statement to comment on the news:
We have had to make some very difficult decisions to structure our development studios and investments around building the best games possible with our key franchises — Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC, and Game of Thrones. After careful consideration, we are closing three of our development studios – Monolith Productions, Player First Games and Warner Bros. Games San Diego. This is a strategic change in direction and not a reflection of these teams or the talent that consists within them. The development of Monolith's Wonder Woman videogame will not move forward. Our hope was to give players and fans the highest quality experience possible for the iconic character, and unfortunately, this is no longer possible within our strategic priorities.
This is another tough decision, as we recognize Monolith's storied history of delivering epic fan experiences through amazing games. We greatly admire the passion of the three teams and thank every employee for their contributions. As difficult as today is, we remain focused on and excited about getting back to producing high-quality games for our passionate fans and developed by our world class studios and getting our Games business back to profitability and growth in 2025 and beyond.
Even the outstanding success of Hogwarts Legacy, the best-selling game in 2023, was not enough to offset several disappointing releases for the publisher, including Gotham Knights, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, MultiVersus, and now Wonder Woman. It didn't help that all the studios at Warner Bros. Games, except for NetherRealm and Avalanche Software, seemingly took between six and seven years to release a new game, far longer than the average triple-A title.
It's yet another hard blow to an industry that is facing continuous rounds of layoffs and studio closures.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.
