Yesterday afternoon we witnessed a devastating loss to the video games industry. In another round of layoffs that seems to happen every week, WB Games announced it would be closing three studios. These were Player First Games (Multiversus), WB San Diego (which had not yet announced its game), and Monolith Productions. That last one is truly shocking as Monolith is responsible for some of the best FPS titles ever made, not to mention the highly successful Middle-earth series, which included the innovative “Nemesis” system.
As Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier mentioned on Bluesky — and expanded on in his report — sources close to the outlet confirmed the closure to him and added that the Wonder Woman game had been cancelled. Wonder Woman would have been Monolith’s first project since 2017’s Middle-earth: Shadow of War and its development history was constantly mired in controversy. As Schreier notes, most of Monolith’s leadership had resigned in 2021 and when WB was sold to Discovery in 2022, mismanagement of the studio from WB Games head David Haddad had nearly driven the studio to the breaking point.
In the memo sent to staff and Bloomberg, WB’s head of games and streaming JB Perrette wrote, “The quality of too many of our new releases has really missed the mark. We need to make some substantial changes to our portfolio/team structure if we are to commit the necessary resources to get back to a ‘fewer but bigger franchises’ strategy.” A representative for WB Games also told Bloomberg that the closure of each studio was “not a reflection of these teams or the talent that consistent within them.”
If you’ve followed WB Games over the last few years, you would have likely seen the writing on the wall. Both Gotham Knights and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League were tremendous failures and even Multiversus, its Smash Bros.-like fighter, failed to bring in a decent audience. It was really only Hogwarts Legacy that made tons of cash, but the semi-follow-up Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions was another dud. The publisher has been struggling for a while now and, sadly, quality studios were made to suffer for it.
As a fan of old-school PC shooters, I’m truly shocked by Monolith’s closure. I kind of figured this would happen as we’ve seen nothing from Wonder Woman since its announcement in late 2021, but I was hoping something would turn around. Sadly, any hope of Monolith’s classic titles getting remasters or re-releases is basically dead. Both FEAR and Condemned rest with WB and the tangled mess of rights that is No One Lives Forever will probably never get resolved. At least Blood was freed from the horrific grasp of WB.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
