Warner Bros. Closes Three Studios Including Team Behind Smash-Like Brawler 'MultiVersus'

The new Wonder Woman project has also been axed

by · Nintendo Life
Image: WB Games

The video game industry has already experienced a lot of layoffs this year and now Warner Bros. has announced it's shutting down three studios.

This includes Player First - the team behind the Smash-like brawler MultiVersus, which also announced the end of its service earlier this month and will go offline in May 2025. Apart from this, WB San Diego is closing its doors. This team supposedly had an exciting new 'AAA' free-to-play in the works.

And last is the closure of Monolith Productions (Middle-earth) including the cancellation of its new Wonder Woman game, which has reportedly been in development for multiple years now. Warner Bros. shared the following statement with Kotaku explaining how these layoffs are all tied to a "strategic change":

"We have had to make some very difficult decisions to structure our development studios and investments around building the best games possible with our key franchises -– Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC and Game of Thrones. After careful consideration, we are closing three of our development studios – Monolith Productions, Player First Games and Warner Bros. Games San Diego. This is a strategic change in direction and not a reflection of these teams or the talent that consists within them."

MultiVersus was designed as a free-to-play and is shutting down just a year after its relaunch on Xbox, PlayStation and PC.

Image: WB Games

Related Articles

News MultiVersus Is Shutting Down, Less Than A Year Since Its Relaunch

Pure XboxA sad end for the free-to-play brawler

News Ubisoft Confirms Another Wave Of Layoffs, With 185 Employees Affected

The "restructurings" continue

News Netflix Lays Off Staff At 'Oxenfree' Developer

It's unclear how many have been let go

News Metroid Prime Remastered Studio 'Iron Galaxy' Confirms Lay Offs

To "enable our long-term survival"

We'll let you know if we hear any significant updates.

[source kotaku.com]

About Liam Doolan

Liam is a news writer and reviewer for Nintendo Life and Pure Xbox. He's been writing about games for more than 15 years and is a lifelong fan of Mario and Master Chief.

Comments 32

Quick! More live-service games will save the day!

@Liam_Doolan Does this affect the development team for Cars 3 for Switch?

@PikminMarioKirby Avalanche is WB’s golden goose right now with Hogwarts Legacy. They understand how to make proper licensed games. Saving them from being shut down after Disney Interactive’s blowout was one of the few right calls WB has made in the last 10 years, even then, that was likely an entirety different crew of leadership that took it on.

Removed - trolling/baiting

Warner Bros Interactive is 100 times worse than EA and Activision combined.

Removed - flaming/arguing

There was a San Diego Studio?

I don't know what's worse: the fact that game studios are continuing to suffer from unnecessary layoffs and closures, or the fact that Warner Bros. is continuing to destroy every ounce of goodwill they once had thanks to Zaslav's cartoonish greed and ineptitude. Either way, I truly loathe it.

its times like this i wonder how many live service failures it'll take before they take the hint

A lot of WB's troubles can be put on AT & T's shoulders.

Basically they brought them realised they weren't gonna make as much $$$ as they thought they would because WB already had debts, so they saddled them with their own debts and sold them on.

Last time I checked it was like over $50 billion in debt.

@axelhander lol that game couldn’t hold a candle to smash. ultimate and wii u? debatable

brawl and melee? hell no

64? lol ok sure i guess

Saw this one coming ever since that troubled report on the Wonder Woman game earlier this month.
Sad, but not surprised.

Monolith Productions was just a quality studio with a long history, that never delivered a really bad game (as far as I know) and created some absolute cult classics, like No One Lives Forever, Blood or F.E.A.R.. And now, they're gone just like this. They truly deserved better.

MultiVersus is a game I always wanted to play but just never really got around to it, because 1) I was waiting for a Switch port, and 2) I was waiting for the game to actually feel complete with a sizeable roster that wasn't filled with throw-away picks like LeBron James and a random Banana Guard from Adventure Time. I don't really care about comic book heroes, I just wanted to see more 90's-2000's Cartoon Network representation.

I recently did a podcast episode on my channel where I discussed the wasted potential of MultiVersus, and this is one of my favorite video thumbnails I've made so far, lol.

Oof. WB fumbled Multiversus bad. It should've been on Switch and the whole release structure was a mess.

Multiversus had potential. I played the beta a lot and had much fun with it. The release version however felt horrible in gameplay and was just stuffed with paid content. Also the balancing was ***** and heavily favored characters you had to buy at that time …

So they had a good foundation which they killed between beta and release and on top of it were greedy as f…

As a Wonder Woman fan, I'm so upset by this. The fact that the most iconic female superhero still doesn't have her own video game or animated series is just plain wrong and WB should be ashamed of themselves for mistreating such a beloved character. There's more to DC comics than just Batman. :/

@nomither6 I like how one of the games you think is better is the one where dashing has a random, unavoidable chance to leave you vulnerable, for absolutely no good reason.

That aside, MVS was better. Devs that had competitive sensibilities when they weren't stifled by awful corporate heads, and actual rollback. That ALONE qualifies as better.

Removed - flaming/arguing

The sad part is that MultiVersus season 5, the one that had Aqua Man and Lola Bunny was the best comeback of the game restoring a lot of the features of the beta version and making the speed a tad faster and more fun. It's too bad it was a tad too late, season 5 should had been what the revive full version should be. Also not releasing a Switch version so platform fighter fans could try the game is a big miss opportunity, I'm not sure why the idiots are Warner Bros. Games thought that ignoring the Switch was a good idea. If you are making a platform fighter and you aren't bringing the game to the main platform where the platform fighter audience is then you shouldn't be making a platform fighter to begin with, maybe a Fortnite or a Call of Duty clone would had been better.

@Migoshuro I agree- FEAR was such an incredible franchise idk why the hell they didn’t bring it back! Warner Bros has no idea what they’re doing! It’s like Atari early 1980s all over again!

Quick! One of you gaming companies that cares about game preservation please snap up all the Midway/Atari Games classic arcade games they own before it’s too late!!!!

@axelhander to each their own. i guess that’s why it got shutdown twice because it was so much better, lol. and tripping sucked , yeah, but it was still a quality game(especially with mods) unlike temu smash bros/multiversus :/

@Serpenterror it never released on switch because they knew it was outclassed by smash bros . even the devs subconsciously knew that crap wasn’t better than smash bros, so it made more sense to go to the platforms where there was no smash

This was one of the last things Kevin Conroy (Batman: The Animated Series) voiced in before dying shortly after.

Words cannot describe to how disrepectful WB has become.

How about at the very least reducing the income of those on top making the bad calls if not straight up laying those off instead of shutting down these studios?
Apart from very few right calls like Avalanche and their Hogwarts Legacy as already mentioned here, Warner Bros. never fails to disappoint...

It’s over for a huge chunk of the “AAA” industry people enjoyed so much in the 00’s and 10’s, whatever happens with Ubisoft this year will probably be the moment where people finally start to acknowledge this in mass.

With all of the closures, and with Nintendo actually doing so well, I wonder why they have not been on an acquisitions kick since they are so cash rich. I would think that some of these developers would be good enough that Nintendo wouldn't mind bringing them in to bulk up their library for switch 2. Not saying these three studios in particular, but in general. With so many closures in the industry, it seems like a prime time for Nintendo to pick the best of the bunch to bring in house to start developing for Switch 2. Think of how many dormant franchises that Nintendo has that could be revived with more talent. The first two games that come to mind are always Eternal Darkness and Geist.

Noooooooo!! Not Wonder Woman. Seriously she’s one of my favourite superheroes.

Game wasn't that good compared to Smash anyway.

@boxyguy agreed, but unfortunately they all have so much money to throw around and such little regard for employees, customers and the final product, that they'd all rather throw good money after bad in the hopes that they might hit that Fortnite jackpot. The strategy of moderate budget for moderate returns is out of the window, and the places that relied on it, generally bought out or muscled out. It doesn't matter that those games could earn them steady millions, it doesn't matter that they are wasting millions, because they could get billions if just one hits.

And even if they do make a hit, apparently they then fire all their Western devs and replace them with cheaper outsource devs anyway (Marvel Rivals). It's not about games anymore, it's not about fun or storytelling or just the craft or even the tech, it's about money and nothing else.

@SoIDecidedTo
The "acquisition kicks" are what put all of these companies in the position they are in.
Nintendo is smarter than that.

Show Comments

Leave A Comment

Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...

Related Articles

Funko Fusion Is Deemed A "Complete Commercial And Critical Failure"Around 20 unconfirmed layoffs reportedOllie Reynolds, 17 Feb 2025Warner Bros. Closes Three Studios Including Team Behind Smash-Like Brawler 'MultiVersus'The new Wonder Woman project has also been axedLiam Doolan, 26 Feb 2025