Rocksteady Pulls Suicide Squad in Early Access After Players Face Major Bug

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League seems to have hit a new hurdle right out of the gate. The co-op looter shooter from Rocksteady Studios is all set for a full release on February 2 and was supposed to be in its three-day early access launch for customers who pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition. The developers, however, were forced to pull the title offline barely an hour into its early access release due to a major bug. Rocksteady confirmed Monday that several players, who logged into the game in early access, encountered a bug that resulted in full story completion. As a result, the studio took down Suicide Squad servers to work on fixing the issue.

“We’re aware that a number of players are currently experiencing an issue whereby upon logging into the game for the first time, they have full story completion,” Rocksteady said in a post on X. “To resolve this issue, we will be performing maintenance on the game servers. During this time the game will be unavailable. We expect this to take several hours and will update once we have more information. We apologise for the inconvenience.”

Finding the full story completed after logging into the game could expose players to major story spoilers and end-game content. It is unclear if players are able to start a new game or are forced to continue from the point of story completion. 

Rocksteady provided an update on the issue late Monday, confirming it had identified the problem that led to full story completion for several player profiles. The studio said it was testing a fix but hasn’t since confirmed if the bug has been resolved. “We hope to implement it and have the game back online as soon as possible,” Rocksteady said in its update post on X.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has had a rough road leading up to its launch, right from the first gameplay reveal in February 2023. The game attracted criticism for incorporating elements from generic looter shooters and ditching the single-player narrative focus from Batman Arkham titles that earned Rocksteady its repute. Suicide Squad was also hit with multiple delays after fan backlash. Originally slated to release May 26, 2023, the live service title finally set a February 2, 2024, launch date.

Meanwhile, publisher Warner Bros. has said that it intends to transform its biggest game franchises into live service titles. During the company’s Q3 earnings call in November last year, CEO David Zaslav confirmed that Warner Bros. games will follow the live service model to become long-term products, with post-launch content drops, season passes and additional DLC. “Ultimately we want to drive engagement and monetization of longer cycles and at higher levels,” Zaslav had said during the call.

Rocksteady, too, has said that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will feature free post-launch seasonal content, with each season bringing new playable characters, challenges, missions and more. Just last week, the studio confirmed that the Joker would arrive as a playable character in the game during its first post-launch season in March.