Author: Game Infliction

Batman. Justice League. Harry Potter. Looney Tunes. Game of Thrones. The list of intellectual property owned by Warner Bros. Discovery is massive, and an awful lot of it seems ripe for being turned into a video game. If you’re thinking WB’s been a little slow to leverage that library, it sounds like the company’s leadership agrees, and is looking not just to make more of its own games, but to license out some of its biggest franchises to other game studios in the future.

Today on the Warner Bros. Discovery Q2 earnings, call CEO David Zaslav and president of global streaming and games JB Perrette responded to a question about the “strategic value” of games to Warner Bros. given recent “uneven performance”. The company had just reported gaming revenue down 41% year-over-year due to underperformance of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League compared to Hogwarts Legacy’s massive success last year. Does WB see games as a core part of its portfolio?

Seems like the answer is yes. Both Zaslav and Perrette explained that they wanted to grow the gaming business, especially in the free-to-play space, which Perrette says can help balance out some of the ups-and-downs of the cyclical console industry. That’s part of why WB acquired Player First Games, developer of Multiversus, earlier this year.

Zaslav followed up by noting that not only did WB want to keep leveraging its eleven studios, but that there’s “also a lot of interest among others in coming to take advantage of some of that IP for gaming, which we’re looking at.”

Here’s both of their answers in full below:

Warner Bros. Discovery reported revenue of $9.7 billion for the quarter, but an overall net loss of $10 billion, $9.1 billion of which was due to impairment charges. The company also reported subscription services were up 3.6 million subscribers from last quarter, bringing its total to 103.3 million.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Ready at Dawn, a venerable game studio that once worked on God War and Daxter among other projects, is closing its doors. Android Central reports that Meta is shuttering the studio effective immediately, with employees being encouraged to apply for other positions within Oculus Studios.

The closure follows Meta’s decision to discontinue Echo VR in 2023, which coincided with major layoffs impacting a third of the studio. Oculus Studios had previously acquired Ready at Dawn, which had found success with the Lone Echo series, to develop VR games for its platforms.

Brutal to hear about the closure of Ready at Dawn. Here’s a documentary I made about the studio while at Game Informer. Woof, double-whammy of sadness this week. https://t.co/Nd9NU5vqkH

— Ben Hanson (@yozetty) August 7, 2024

“As many have already heard, this morning Ready At Dawn Studios is closing its doors. I’ve been at RAD for over 10 years and I am incredibly sad to see this wonderful team I’ve grown to love be broken apart this way,” designer director Robert Duncan wrote. “That said, at least for now I’m trying to focus my effort on (and, let’s be honest, distract myself by) finding solid places for all my dear friends to land. If anyone has any leads/positions they’d like to share, please feel free to reach out to me directly and I’ll try my best to get you in touch with good folks that might be interested.”

The games industry mourned the closure on social media and elsewhere, with many describing it as underappreciated. MinnMax founder Ben Hanson posted a documentary he produced with Game Informer that provides a snapshot of the studio circa 2014, when it was preparing to release The Order: 1886.

Ready at Dawn’s history extends all the way back to 2003, when it was formed by former employees of Naughty Dog and Blizzard Entertainment. It was particularly well-known for its prowess on the PlayStation Portable, producing multiple God of War games for the platform.

Following the mixed reception of The Order: 1886, Ready at Dawn began to move into VR, releasing Lone Echo for the Oculus Rift in 2017. We wrote at the time, “Lone Echo and Echo Arena are the rare games that demonstrate the true value of VR and hand tracking. Its sense of movement feels great, and it couldn’t exist in any other way.”

After it was purchased by Oculus Studios in 2021, Ready at Dawn released Lone Echo II, but otherwise has not put out a game since. A report in mid-July stated that Meta was reportedly cutting its Reality Labs division’s budget by 20 percent in 2026 in order to make a “better long-term impact” in VR development. Meta subsequently told Android Central that this isn’t a signal “wider cuts” to the number of first-party games on Quest.

Ready at Dawn is one many game studios to close in 2024, joining Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, Roll7, and more in what has been a difficult year for games. For more, check out our deep dive into the layoffs impacting the games industry.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Warner Bros. Discovery reported today that its game revenue suffered a major drop this quarter from the same period last year, largely due to weak performance of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.

Games revenue, under the WB Games division, dropped 41% year-over-year. Though Suicide Squad’s struggles were the main culprit, it was admittedly up against stiff competition: last year’s comparable included strong sales of Hogwarts Legacy, which launched in February of 2023 and continued to do exceedingly well throughout the year that followed. It sold 22 million copies in 2023 alone, and has since reached 24 million.

Suicide Squad, meanwhile, was panned by critics and called “disappointing” by WB Discovery boss David Zaslav last quarter, and resulted in a $200 million impairment charge in that report. An impairment charge is a practice businesses use when they need to write off or report a reduction in the value of some of their assets that they previously thought would have a higher value.

Speaking of impairment charges, Warner Bros. Discovery undertook a massive one this quarter outside of games. The company reported revenue of $9.7 billion, but an overall net loss of $10 billion, $9.1 billion of which was due to impairment charges. Officially, WB cited the charge as due to “the difference between market capitalization and book value, continued softness in the U.S. linear advertising market, and uncertainty related to affiliate and sports rights renewals, including the NBA.”

The first part, about book value, is WB reevaluating the value of its TV networks segment in light of customers and advertiser interest in streaming and digital content over traditional TV. But the NBA bit was likely responsible for a hefty sum of the impairment charge too. WB’s contract for NBA media rights expires after the 2024-2025 season, and the NBA appears to have opted to take its business to Amazon instead. Though WB has since attempted to exercise what it says are its rights to match Amazon’s offer and is suing the NBA over them, it doesn’t seem likely to win.

While all that sounds fairly dismal, WB’s subscription services were up 3.6 million from last quarter, bringing its total to 103.3 million. This is the first time the company has passed 100 million subscribers.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.