Warner Bros. Reportedly Considers Leaving Game Business

According to a Financial Times report, Warner Bros.'s top management seeks to compensate for the company's dropping share price. The price of Warner Bros. Discovery, a company's subdivision engaged in the game industry, has fallen by almost 70% since it was formed in 2022.

The chief executives considered splitting the company, and the draft was estimated as compelling. However, the company's management rejected this plan as it entails many potential lawsuits. Instead, the company seeks to sell its smaller assets.

These plans include selling Polish broadcaster TVN or a stake in Warner's video games business, which holds valuable intellectual property to Harry Potter games, as stated in the report. This addresses Hogwarts Legacy, which turned out to be one of the fastest-growing and best-selling games of 2023, not only within the company but also among projects from other developers. The game saw immense success among the audience: fans spent over 406 million hours playing it over two months after the release, and retail sales over Q1 2023 brought the company over $1 billion.

Following the Financial Times report, the company has focused on cutting costs and paying off debt, conducting several waves of lay-offs and selling assets, such as All3Media, since its formation in 2022.

The decision to sell its assets might be driven by the failed launch of another Warner Bros. Games' project, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which has fallen short of expectations of the company, in contrast to Hogwarts Legacy, which exceeded expectations of the publisher.

Instead, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, released in February 2024, happened to be one of the company's largest failures, costing Warner Bros. $200 million. This made the company contemplate continuing the game's support after the fifth season, which meant potentially shutting down the game. However, the later news revealed that the game would receive one more year of support.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League became a disappointment not only for the company but also for the fans. There was more than one reason for this, including a lack of a stable outline of the game's development, direction changes, production delays, a misselected genre, and "a culture of rigid perfectionism."

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