A new report has emerged that claims a "director's cut" version of Hogwarts Legacy is in the works, and that none other than Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League developer Rocksteady is helping out with development.
In a new (paywalled) Bloomberg article, Jason Schreier says "many" Rocksteady employees are helping to develop Hogwarts Legacy: Director's Cut (which isn't what Schreier calls it), and that the studio is also looking to pitch a new single-player game that would take it back to its roots.
If Hogwarts Legacy: Director's Cut is indeed in development, that might explain the game's recent, rather lackluster summer update, which merely added a photo mode and brought a handful of quality-of-life changes to the popular wizarding RPG.
After all, if a substantially expanded or reworked version of the game is currently in development, it's likely that Warner Bros won't want to introduce new features for smaller updates, but instead save them for the director's cut when it arrives.
Of course, that hasn't been officially confirmed by Warner Bros or Avalanche Software (not to be confused with Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios), so take this report with a pinch of salt as always.
Rocksteady and the sad tale of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
Schreier's comments about the potential Hogwarts Legacy: Director's Cut come as part of a wider report on the failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which Warner Bros admitted had "fallen short of [its] expectations" in February this year.
As the Bloomberg article highlights, Warner Bros said in May this year that Suicide Squad constituted a $200 million loss for the company, which represents a rather significant hole in the studio's finances.
Schreier details a tense meeting between Warner Bros gaming head David Haddad and Rocksteady, in which the exec was "blunt, according to two people briefed on his remarks".
According to Schreier, development on Suicide Squad was "tumultuous" and plagued by a number of setbacks, including a vision that was constantly changing, a "culture of rigid perfectionism", and a pivot towards live-service gameplay for which Rocksteady was unprepared.
Since launch, Rocksteady has been posting weekly developer updates for Suicide Squad, detailing upcoming content and spotlighting certain features of the game.
Last week, though, the studio announced these updates would become less frequent, instead being released "when we have big news to share about future content".
This doesn't necessarily mean support is winding down for Suicide Squad already, but it's hard to imagine the game has too much life left in it given its anemic player counts.
Stay tuned for more info on all things Hogwarts Legacy and Suicide Squad, as well as all other things Warner Bros-related in gaming, as soon as we get them.
