Earlier today, we received the sad news that Warner Bros. has decided to both cancel the in-development Wonder Woman game, and shut down the studio behind it, Monolith Productions. While the closure of the studio was fairly surprising, the fate of the Wonder Woman game itself wasn’t, as there have been numerous reports since its reveal all the way back in 2021 about troubled development.

We didn’t know much about the game before it was scrapped, but we did know that it would utilize the Nemesis System, the groundbreaking feature that first appeared in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. It’s was a fun system that a lot of developers could have implemented into their own games with fun tweaks and changes, if it wasn’t for the fact that Warner Bros. patented the entire thing.

With the cancellation of Wonder Woman, and the subsequent shutdown of Monolith, there were questions about whether we’d see the Nemesis System ever again, and whether other developers could take the system and use it in their games. Unfortunately, even though it’s unlikely we’ll ever see another game with the system included, Warner Bros. still has a firm grip on it.

Wonder Woman Cancellation Won’t Affect Warner Bros. Nemesis System Patent

First pointed out by Venture Beat, if Warner Bros. was to keep up the associated fees for the patent, even now that Monolith Productions is closing its doors, it would be able to keep the patent for the Nemesis System until 2036. You can see for yourself in the patent filed back in 2016, which has an adjusted expiration date of August 11, 2036.

With how long games take to develop these days, that means we’ll likely only get a single game that includes the Nemesis System before that expiration date arrives, and that’s only if a studio underneath Warner Bros. decides to implement it. The company could just sit on the patent for the next decade and do nothing with it, which is a damn shame for a system so revolutionary. Fingers crossed Rocksteady’s rumored Batman game uses it in some way.