Suicide Squad Developers Describe 'Soul-Destroying' Live-Service Grind

Lead developers at Rocksteady, including co-director Axel Rydby, have opened up about the grueling development of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, describing a process so draining it nearly drove them out of the industry entirely. For a studio built on acclaimed single-player design, the shift to a spreadsheet-driven live-service model proved to be less of a creative journey and more of an endless corporate drill. It turns out that when you trade narrative pacing for daily engagement loops, the first thing to break isn't the code, but the people writing it.

According to Rydby and other lead developers at the studio, the reality of building a live-service game under modern publisher mandates meant grappling with a prolonged development cycle that felt increasingly divorced from actual game design. Rydby recounted that the exhausting process left him feeling "like I wasn't making games anymore," describing a workflow that felt more akin to "following a spreadsheet" than crafting an interactive experience.

This shift in focus highlights a broader industry tension. Many veterans are actively searching for ways to escape these grueling corporate mandates; indeed, some are even starting new ventures specifically to tackle live service trends and return to more sustainable, creative-first development models.

The details

• Key figures: Co-director Axel Rydby and senior Rocksteady developers
• The project: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
• The core issue: A grueling development cycle driven by live-service mandates
• The fallout: Multiple senior developers nearly quitting the video game industry permanently

From design to spreadsheet

The transition from traditional, self-contained campaigns to endless, live-service loops has become a familiar story in modern game development, but rarely do the creators themselves pull back the curtain so plainly. For the senior staff at Rocksteady, the prolonged production of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League became an exercise in attrition.

The continuous pressure to build, maintain, and adjust a live ecosystem meant that creative decisions were routinely subordinated to corporate retention goals. This grind was so intense that it nearly pushed multiple senior developers to walk away from the video game industry permanently. When the very act of making a game makes you want to quit the medium entirely, the system is no longer just demanding; it is actively counter-productive.

A warning to the industry

The developers' reflections are not just a post-mortem of a single project, but a warning about where the broader industry is heading. One designer on the project warned that the current path of major publishers pursuing live-service models is causing the entire industry to "severely lose our way."

When success is measured in daily active users and monetization curves rather than player satisfaction and creative fulfillment, the art form begins to resemble a compliance exercise. The warning suggests that the pursuit of recurring revenue is costing publishers something far harder to replace: the institutional knowledge and passion of their most experienced creators.

Why it matters

The accounts from the Rocksteady team show the human cost of the industry's obsession with live-service models. When seasoned developers are pushed to the brink of leaving the industry entirely, the long-term viability of major studios is put at risk. The situation serves as a stark reminder that while spreadsheets can project revenue, they cannot generate the creative energy required to build games worth playing in the first place.