Monolith Productions, Player First and Warner Bros San Diego Shutter Entirely Under WB

Warner Bros. has shut down three of its most well-known studios in a new development: Monolith Productions, Player First, and Warner Bros. San Diego. As a result, the upcoming Wonder Woman game that was being developed under the three-decade-old Monolith studio has also been scrapped. 

The original reporting comes from Jason Schreier, a veteran games industry reporter at Bloomberg who’s reliably reported on these sorts of shut-downs and layoffs. A month ago, he also reported that there was turbulence in the WB Games division, especially after its President departed. 

The reporting was later confirmed by reporter Ethan Gach in a statement, which explained that the decisions were made around “building the best games possible with our key franchises — Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC, and Game of Thrones.” 

 “The development of Monolith’s Wonder Woman videogame will not move forward,” the statement further explains. “Our hope was to give the players and fans the highest quality experience possible for the iconic character, and unfortunately this is no longer possible within our strategic priorities.” 

The statement caps off with: “As difficult as today is, we remain focused on and excited about getting back to producing high-quality games for our passionate fans and developed by our world class studios and getting our Games business back to profitability and growth in 2025 and beyond.”  

Monolith has a long history of groundbreaking games and game engineering technology, most famously F.E.A.R., No One Lives Forever, and the Shadow of Mordor games. It was acquired by WB in 2004, in the midst of its production of the acclaimed first-person shooter horror game F.E.A.R., but hasn't seen a game published in quite a few years as its Wonder Woman production ramped up. 

Many critics of the shutdown decision have since pointed out that this means there’s no studio with the rights nor knowledge to tap into Monolith’s original “Nemesis” character interaction system. In short, the system allowed the game to “level up” NPC enemies behind the scenes to parallel the player’s growth. Nemesis was a key feature of the Lord of the Rings games Shadow of Mordor and Middle-earth: Shadow of War. 

Nemesis was patented by the Warner Bros. corporation in 2021, effectively pulling it out of Monolith’s hand. If they maintain all processes and fees, they’ll own the patent until 2036.  

The Wonder Woman game was meant to be the next Monolith game to utilize the Nemesis system. It also had prolific comic book writer Gail Simone on the team as a self-described “long-term consultant” throughout the project, as she revealed in a thread after the news broke. Simone mourned both Monolith and the game itself in her own thread of tweets, explaining how she loved Monolith’s LotR titles and calling the game “gorgeous and expansive” and a “showpiece epic.” 

“It was a dream come true,” she continued. “Wonder Woman had a dream team and they put their all into it.  They made sure it had WW and DC lore on every aspect of the game.  

“It was a thrill and honor to work with them.” 

Already, Multiversus, Player First’s platform fighter game featuring properties from WB and other partnered companies, was on a course to shut down this May. Rocksteady Games, responsible for the Arkham series and Suicide Squad: Kill The Jusice League, and Hogwarts Legacy’s Avalanche Software are still present under the WB banner.