UPDATE 3 10/6: The call is Ellison’s now. The merger closed, and a rival exec calls Warner Bros. Games Skydance’s “secret weapon.”
UPDATE 2 9/24: Ed Boon has responded to the Injustice 3 rumors.
UPDATE 9/22: Supergirl and Batwoman have leaked as Injustice 3‘s first two fighters.
A listing offering gamers $250 to playtest an “unreleased AAA 2D fighting game” went up on the Good Gamer Group website over the weekend and has since been deleted.
Good Gamer Group runs NDA-covered testing for game publishers. The sessions ran four hours in Culver City, California, on September 14 and 15.
EventHubs spotted the listing on September 13. Kotaku and Eurogamer picked it up from there.
No announced game matches the description. Everything points at NetherRealm Studios and the still-unannounced Injustice 3.
Top 25% Players Wanted In Warner Bros.’ Backyard
The listing wanted serious players only.
Applicants needed a rank in the top 25% of a major 2D fighting game, regular competitive play online, and had to be 18 or older to attend in person.
An NDA was required before sitting down. Each tester got one four-hour session and $250.
That description knocks out everything on the calendar. Virtua Fighter Crossroads and Dead or Alive 7 are 3D games. Melty Blood Twi-Lumina is 2D, but French Bread isn’t making AAA games.
Then there’s the location.
NetherRealm is based in Chicago, but as Kotaku points out, parent company Warner Bros. Discovery keeps a headquarters in Culver City, the same city hosting the sessions.
NetherRealm is also the only American studio making AAA 2D fighting games at all.
The only other DC fighting game in the pipeline is DCKO, the free-to-play mobile title Warner Bros. announced in July. Nobody is calling that AAA.
Voice Actors, A Steam Update, And Ed Boon’s Teases
The Injustice 3 trail has been building for over a year.
Last August, Phil LaMarr and George Newbern, Aquaman and Superman in the first two Injustice games, reportedly let slip to fans that they were returning for a third game. Both walked it back shortly after.
In March, Injustice 2 got a mystery update on Steam after five years of silence. A month later, a Warner Bros. Games artist listed Injustice 3 on their online resume.
NetherRealm has been staffing up, too, hiring QA testers in April and designers in July. The designer listing asked candidates to “analyze and incorporate user feedback from usability tests,” which is exactly what happened in Culver City this weekend.
Studio boss Ed Boon said in May that NetherRealm is “definitely pursuing another Mortal Kombat game” and “definitely doing more as well.”
Boon has also spent recent months posting old Injustice gameplay and polling fans on their favorite super moves. That’s how Boon teases things.
The timing works. Mortal Kombat 1 arrived in 2023, four years after Mortal Kombat 11, putting NetherRealm’s next game on track for 2027, a decade after Injustice 2.
A reveal could come at New York Comic-Con in October, with The Game Awards in December the bigger stage. Mortal Kombat 11 was announced there.
One thing to keep in mind: Warner Bros. is about to have new owners.
Paramount’s $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery hasn’t closed. A dozen state attorneys general sued to stop it, and Paramount and California AG Rob Bonta sit down for two days of settlement talks at the end of October.
When it closes, WB Games and NetherRealm go with it. David Ellison ends up owning Injustice, Mortal Kombat, and every DC character in them.
Which means Ellison gets final say on what a new Injustice looks like, what it costs, and when it ships.
Our insiders have said Ellison is going all in on Batman and wants DC bigger everywhere, which is the whole idea behind the dream team he’s assembling. A Batman-and-Superman fighting game with a decade of goodwill behind it fits that plan cleanly.
NetherRealm can playtest all weekend. By the time Injustice 3 has a release date, that call belongs to David Ellison.
