WB Games have closed down three game studios, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reported.
Monolith Productions, Player First Games and WB San Diego will no longer be operating.
In addition, Monolith’s Wonder Woman game has also been cancelled.
Monolith has a long history of making FPS games, from the anime mech shooter Shogo: Mobile Armor Division to infamous abandonware No One Lives Forever. And from competent movie sequel Tron 2.0 to horror-infused shooter with bullet time and seemingly smart AI enemies F.E.A.R.
More recently, Monolith’s legacy is their advancements in making AI systems in games through the Nemesis System. This patented system was only used in two games, Shadow Of Mordor and Shadow Of War, which allowed players to form relationships with a hierarchy of goons that can evolve into personalised recurring villains based on how the player interacted with them.
The cancelled Wonder Woman game was supposed to make use of this system as well.
Player First Games was the new developer behind free-to-play platform fighter Multiversus. The crossover Smash Bros. like gameplay certainly had good buzz, with good reception among those available to play in the beta (which for some reason was not available in Southeast Asia). Despite the popular reception of the beta, which had monetisation, Multiversus was put offline for an indefinite time only to reappear a year later, losing all traction due to the switch to Unreal Engine 5 undoing a lot of the game features and feel that fans loved during the beta. The game will close its servers this May.
WB Game San Diego was a mobile game studio.
WB Games have no publicly announced this at the time of writing. But several employees of Monolith Productions have since come out posting on social media announcing they are looking for work.
The games industry continues to suffer from numerous rounds of layoffs with thousands affected since 2023.