The catastrophic failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which cost Warner Bros. about $200 million, didn’t just hit the balance sheet — it ripped into the mental wellbeing of some Rocksteady devs. Axel Ridby and Johnny Armstrong have said the seven‑year slog slowly turned into a parade of marketing spreadsheets and KPI demands, with management obsessed over replayability and ways to monetize everything; creativity, they claim, was squeezed out. Both came away bruised, on the verge of quitting the industry entirely, emotionally drained in a way that money doesn’t fix. Still, wanting to feel the joy of making games again — messy, stubborn joy — pushed them toward an indie gamble: Secret of Circadia. Right now the duo are on Kickstarter (KS), seeking funds for a small, independent project that might let them work without the corporate pressure that, frankly, turned their previous job into a nightmare — and that’s where this story sits for now, tentative and a little raw.