Rocksteady Studios, best known for making the acclaimed Batman Arkham Trilogy of games and the panned Suicide Squad live-service game is reportedly making another Batman game. The report comes from Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier who is an extremely reliable reporter when he isn’t saving stories for a book.

People are most likely happy about this. Why wouldn’t they be? Rocksteady made 3 amazing Batman games that everyone likes and agrees are some of, if not the, best superhero games ever made. To hear they’re making another is good news right?

I love the Arkham games. I’m one of the many people who think they’re the pinnacle of superhero games. But when I hear Rocksteady is going back to Batman I just get a little sad. They had their trilogy, it’s time to let them move on. I would have the same reaction if Christopher Nolan said he was going back to make another Batman movie.

Why do we want another Rocksteady Batman game? What could they possibly be able to do at this point that would justify them going back to Batman? The story they were telling is complete. The gameplay that they innovated in Arkham Asylum and then subsequently copied by every action game since is as refined as it’s going to be. People are happy because they like those Batman games, they were disappointed in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and are glad Rocksteady is going to make a good game that they’ll like. But why?

All 3 of Rocksteady’s Batman games are readily available to play. It’s not like they’re locked to old consoles that aren’t easily accessible to people. They’re on Switch for goodness sake, everyone and their grandpa has Nintendo’s portable magic toaster. People hear “New Rocksteady Batman” and they get excited because they know Rocksteady made good Batman games so this one will probably be good too. But I’m just sad. I’m sad because I’ll never be able to see what Rocksteady can do on their own, without Batman. I’m sad because I’ll never know how Rocksteady would handle another DC hero, one who needs a game more than Batman. I’m sad because I’ll never get to play a Rocksteady original.

Did you know that before Rocksteady made Batman Arkham Asylum they made a first-person shooter called Urban Chaos: Riot Response? You probably didn’t. It’s a bit of an underrated gem but it’s very good and very cool.

Urban Chaos came out in 2006 and then Rocksteady spent the next 10 years making Batman games. Very good Batman games. Then they spent 8 years making a live service Suicide Squad game. In 2016 it probably made sense to make a live service Suicide Squad game but by the time it came out, it was too late. in 2024 no one cared about the Suicide Squad and no one wanted a new live service game. But Urban Chaos was cool and we’ll never know what other cool games Rocksteady is capable of because just like the Joker, they’re going back to Batman.

Rocksteady going back to Batman illustrates all the problems with modern AAA gaming in a nutshell. They made very good, very successful IP games. Then they had to make a live service game. Why? Why did a studio that had only ever made single-player games make a live service game? Because Warner Brothers wanted a game that could make an infinite stream of money like Fortnite and Destiny instead of being satisfied making a bunch of finite money that would then be used to fund another game and so on and so forth.

This is also why Rocksteady is now going back to Batman. Because Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was a colossal failure. Of course it was a failure. No one in the general public has cared about the Suicide Squad since the atrocious 2016 film came out. And no one cares about live service games anymore, especially paid ones. Live service games require an enormous time sink. At this point playing a live service game is essentially a separate hobby from regular gaming.

Since live service games are such a time commitment, you’d be very hard-pressed to find people willing to add a new one into their rotation. There simply isn’t enough time in a year to consistently play and keep up with more than 2, maybe 3 live service games, and by 2024, everyone already had theirs. So unless your game is so spectacularly good that people just have to add it to their rotation or drop a game in its favor, your game is basically doomed. Especially if it’s a paid game. Kill the Justice League never had a chance even if it was good which it wasn’t.

Why would it be good? It was a live-service looter shooter made by a team who had spent the last 10 years making single-player beat ’em ups. So it launched the way most failed live service games launch. With decent moment-to-moment gameplay but barebones content, overly repetitive mission design, and unenticing loot. Anthem and Marvel’s Avengers, meet the newest resident on the island of misfit games.

And now because the game that was always doomed to fail did just that, Rocksteady will never be allowed to do anything non-Batman again. Their corporate overlords won’t allow that. Their corporate overlords demand guaranteed profits. Huge ones. Record-breaking ones. And Rocksteady has already proven they can’t make a profit in the genre designed to make infinite money. So they have to go back to Batman because Batman is guaranteed profits. People will turn up for a Batman game and they’ll especially turn up for a Rocksteady one.

Because modern AAA game development is bloated beyond all belief, it’s going to take half a console generation and half a gazillion dollars for Rocksteady to make their newest Batman game. And because of the way modern AAA development operates, if it makes a ginormous profit, Rocksteady will be put to work on another Batman game so they can make even more money. If it doesn’t make a ginormous profit, the studio will be downsized. Even if it makes a profit, they’ll be downsized if Warner Brothers determines the profit isn’t big enough. At that point, they’ll either be put to work on as many Batman games as humanely possible or they’ll be shut down.

In 5-8 years the game will come out and it will probably be good and everyone will enjoy it. I know I will. But I’ll also be thinking, “I wonder what they could have done with Superman, or Urban Chaos 2, or something completely different”. Rocksteady will never get to make their Ghost of Tsushima or their Uncharted because that would be a gamble in a way them making another Batman game isn’t.

So while it may seem exciting that we’re gonna get a new Rocksteady Batman game, it’s actually just sad. A talented studio who could have and should have come out of the Arkham trilogy with a blank check to make anything they wanted, is now stuck in purgatory. Forever destined to make Batman games because that’s the only thing their publisher knows will make enough money to justify Rocksteady’s existence. We’ll never get to see what they could have done with another DC character, we’ll never get to see what they could have done with an original concept. Urban Chaos will always be their only non-IP game.