Warner Bros. is canceling its deliberate Wonder Woman sport and shutting down three studios: Monolith Productions, Participant First Video games, and WB San Diego, in line with Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier.
Schreier broke the news on Bluesky today, adopted by the release of a full report on Bloomberg. Shortly after Schreier’s put up, WB confirmed the shut downs to Kotaku in a statement:
Now we have needed to make some very troublesome choices to construction our improvement studios and investments round constructing the perfect video games potential with our key franchises -– Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC and Recreation of Thrones. After cautious consideration, we’re closing three of our improvement studios – Monolith Productions, Participant First Video games and Warner Bros. Video games San Diego. It is a strategic change in route and never a mirrored image of those groups or the expertise that consists inside them.
The event of Monolith’s Wonder Woman videogame won’t transfer ahead. Our hope was to provide gamers and followers the best high quality expertise potential for the enduring character, and sadly that is not potential inside our strategic priorities. That is one other robust resolution, as we acknowledge Monolith’s storied historical past of delivering epic fan experiences via wonderful video games. We tremendously admire the eagerness of the three groups and thank each worker for his or her contributions. As troublesome as at present is, we stay targeted on and enthusiastic about getting again to producing high-quality video games for our passionate followers and developed by our world class studios and getting our Video games enterprise again to profitability and development in 2025 and past.
Earlier this 12 months, one other Bloomberg report steered Wonder Woman was in hassle after rebooting and switching administrators in early 2024. This got here amid bigger struggles on the firm’s gaming division, together with layoffs at Rocksteady, the lukewarm reception to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and the shutdown of MultiVersus.
And much more just lately, WB Video games has appeared to endure a restructuring of kinds, as long-time video games head David Haddad introduced his departure from the corporate, and rumors circulated that the division might be sold off.
Particularly, this transfer represents a blow to WB’s DC universe-connected gaming efforts. Notably, simply yesterday, James Gunn and Peter Safran mentioned in a presentation that it could be “a few years” earlier than the primary DCU online game.
With this closure, the video games business loses three extremely storied studios. Monolith Productions, which had been engaged on Wonder Woman, was based in 1994 and bought by WB in 2004. It is best-known for Center-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel, Shadow of Conflict, the previous of which pioneered the lauded Nemesis system that WB successfully patented in 2021.
Participant First Video games, a more moderen studio established in 2019, was answerable for MultiVersus. The sport was well-received critically and noticed launch success, however underperformed relative to WB’s expectations. WB San Diego, equally, is a more moderen studio established in 2019 with a deal with cell, free-to-play video games.
These shutdowns proceed a development going again roughly three years of accelerating video games business layoffs, challenge cancellations, and studio closures. In 2023 alone, it is estimated that over 10,000 game developers were laid off. That quantity shot as much as over 14,000 in 2024, and whereas 2025 has seen numerous closures, the precise variety of impacted people is hazier as a result of fewer firms reporting these layoffs and shutdowns, or particular numbers affected.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You will discover her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Bought a narrative tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.