One PlayStation Plus Free Game for January 2025 Is Too Little, Too Late

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home January 3, 2025 10 Views 6 Min Read
One PlayStation Plus Free Game for January 2025 Is Too Little, Too Late



Were it not for Concord, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League would no doubt be the biggest flop of 2024. Eyed cautiously ahead of its release, especially after it was revealed that it would be a live-service experience rather than the more narratively focused, finely-tailored adventures of Rocksteady’s previous Batman: Arkham games, it wasn’t able to fight back the tide of bad publicity upon launch. Once Season 4 ends later this month, Rocksteady will be shuttering support for the game, making its live-service life less than one year.

What exactly this means for the longevity of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is somewhat unclear. Major seasonal updates will cease—that much is clear—though it would appear that the servers will be kept alive for at least a little while longer. But in all likelihood, these servers will be shut down before too long, as the game hasn’t managed to amass a large enough player base during its nearly 12-month tenure to justify such an extension. Thankfully, Season 4 of Suicide Squad introduced an offline setting, meaning that players will still be able to squeeze the last bit of content out of the game even after the servers close. And even before the sun sets on Suicide Squad‘s support, the game will be available for free to PlayStation Plus Essentials subscribers, which is something of a surprise.

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Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Should Have Come to PlayStation Plus Sooner

Pricing Is a Major Part of Why Suicide Squad Failed

Make no mistake: there’s a lot wrong with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. From repetitive and uninventive missions to questionable combat design, there’s plenty to criticize, but something that shouldn’t be overlooked is its price tag. Retailing for $70 at launch, and with microtransactions and paid battle passes, the game was simply asking for too much in contrast to what it wound up offering. If the game were free-to-play, or even just more modestly priced, its strengths would have shone much brighter.

Suicide Squad Would Have Been Well-Suited to a Free Games Service

For better or worse, some games just seem suited to services like Xbox Game Pass or PlayStation Plus. As the cost of the average AAA game inflates and in-game purchases continue to crop up despite consistent backlash, it simply doesn’t make sense for most consumers to shell out $70 or more for games that they are lukewarm about, or about which they have heard overwhelmingly negative opinions. But a fence-sitter might be willing to cough up $10-20 on a month of Game Pass or PlayStation Plus to try such a game out.

In the case of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, this could have translated into a far more dedicated and consistent player base. Again, the game has plenty of room for improvement beyond its price tag, but criticism from the broader gaming community would probably have been softened if the majority of its players could have gotten in the door for free. Keeping a healthy pool of active players is essential for a live-service game’s long-term success, and nurturing this community with the help of a games-on-demand service is a much safer bet than expecting swaths of players to put down $70 upfront.

Were Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League to come to PlayStation Plus or Game Pass earlier last year, perhaps its legacy could have been different. Maybe players who swore off the game after seeing its bad reviews would have found something to latch onto, allowing Rocksteady to keep improving the game and maybe even turning it around eventually. But as it stands, its arrival on PlayStation Plus feels like little more than a surrender.

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