Year In Review—MultiVersus Had it All And Threw it Away

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Year In Review—MultiVersus Had it All And Threw it Away

The MultiVersus open beta feels like a distant memory and a complete shift from its full release. Warner Bros. and Player First Games had a bonafide winner on their hands; one with a ton of popularity, players, and potential. Fast forward to 2024, and its future is looking bleaker than being knocked off a map at 200% damage.

The prospect of Bugs Bunny and Superman taking on the duplicitous duo of Rick Sanchez and The Joker sounds ridiculous. But this is one of MultiVersus‘ shining qualities—making the ridiculous and impossible seem normal and tangible. Tom & Jerry versus LeBron James, Jake the Dog squaring off with The Iron Giant, and the list goes on.

MultiVersus has an incredibly diverse roster of fighters, and I’d argue it’s as spectacular as any other in the genre. I sank many hours into the open beta, and I closely followed MultiVersus game director—Tony Hyunh—on X to see how he addressed feedback. I felt confident in the full game’s launch, but a string of questionable decisions and design choices have left the live-service title fighting for its life.

An Open Beta to Remember

There can only be one. Credit to Warner Bros.

July 26, 2022, is the day MultiVersus burst onto the scene. It launched its open beta / Early Access ******* to test the waters. It had a few characters available at launch, a season pass (more on this later), and a handful of modes. There wasn’t much, but it was enough. I can proudly say Bugs Bunny became my main very quickly—before the burrowing bunny became the meta. I had a blast yeeting enemies to the top of the map with Bugs’ bat, and kicking safes to send foes careening to oblivion.

The gameplay was outstanding, but one thing I noticed early on was how slow progress was. You needed a lot of Gold to unlock characters, and it felt very intentional. The Battle Pass was extremely grindy too, you could already smell the stink of microtransactions being pushed. Regardless, I enjoyed the MultiVersus beta, but the lack of content couldn’t be ignored as the months wore on.

Incredibly strong player count numbers were dwindling, and by early 2023, it was reported that MultiVersus lost 99% of its players. On Mar. 27, 2023, MultiVersus ended its beta *******. This annoyed many players who were now unable to access the characters and cosmetics they had paid for.

Overall, I’d say the open beta was actually a success, and it more than adequately showcased MultiVersus’ frantic and focused fighting mechanics. A Super Smash Bros. clone it may be, it was an extremely good one. Myself, and the community waited patiently until May 28, 2024, for the full launch. Giving Player First Games plenty of time to right the wrongs.

The day came, MultiVersus was back, but it was quickly evident there was only one agenda for Warner Bros.

A Launch to Forget

MultiVersus’ relaunch was met with scratching criticism toward its predatory microtransactions, lack of content, and the paywall nature of existing content. Apparently, both developer and publisher learned nothing from the open beta—ironic, as that’s what it’s for.

Using

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to extrapolate basic data, we can see how quickly support for MultiVersus dissipated. For the fighter’s full release, 114, 515 players hopped back into MultiVersus to try it out. This doesn’t quite hit its all-time peak of 153,433, but it was a great starting point. Unfortunately, numbers dropped off faster than the Flash going for a light jog.

Within two weeks, the daily count was already down to about 20,000 players. By mid-July, MultiVersus could barely scrape together 5,000 players, and if we zoom to December, the figures reached as low as 363 players in a single day. As of writing, MultiVersus is quite dead, and worse still, it could soon be literally dead.

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reported that Warner Bros. lost hundreds of millions in 2024—thanks to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and MultiVersus. Suicide Squad’s content is wrapping up after one year, and MultiVersus might not be far behind on the chopping block.

Player First Games is attempting to make late changes such as changing how to unlock fighters. This is presumably a desperate act to make MultiVersus more accessible and rely less on microtransactions. Only time will tell if it can bounce back, but one thing’s for sure, MultiVersus squandered its potential because of the allure of microtransactions, and companies need to learn to remember its players are the heartbeat of a game, not exploitable cash cows.

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Were you a hardened MultiVersus player sucked by the addictiveness of the beta? Are you sad to see what’s become of the once-promising fighter? I am and thought it had a chance of competing with Nintendo’s long-time franchise. Let me know what you’re thinking below.

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#Year #ReviewMultiVersus #Threw

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