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Speculation had been running rampant in recent weeks in the entertainment industry when word broke that a deal was close for Warner Bros. to be purchased. The question was which company would be getting its hands on WB, with many speculating that the frontrunner was Paramount. However, in the eleventh hour the winner of this bidding war turned out to be Netflix, which purchased WB for an eye-watering $82.7 billion. The deal encompasses WB’s streaming platform HBO Max, as well as either ownership or distribution rights of numerous properties like DC Comics, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and much, much more.
While that might not seem especially related to the world of video games, in reality WB is home to a notable games catalog thanks to its development wing, Warner Bros. Games. WB Games is part of this overall purchase, and that could have some sizable impacts on the multiple studios that the company owns, including TT Games, Rocksteady, NetherRealm, as well as internal WB Games studios in New York and San Francisco. It’s a lot of workers, and with studios like Rocksteady delivering massive flops like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League recently, combined with the state of turmoil that the industry has been in over the past few years, this deal could mean a lot of layoffs are on the horizon.
Still, the Netflix deal is far from wrapped up, as various regulatory bodies will become involved as well as potential lawsuits, resulting in likely many months (if not years) passing before it’s finalized. Given the seemingly never ending consolidation and elimination of so-called redundancies within the video game industry, this could portend further losses of jobs at a time when people are frankly fed up with all of the churn. We’ll continue to report on this as we learn more.
Source: Game Developer
