WB Games Just Can’t Get Live-Service Games Right as Another Title Bites the Dust

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WB Games Just Can’t Get Live-Service Games Right as Another Title Bites the Dust

Yesterday marked another ******** in WB Games’ growing graveyard of failed live-service experiments. MultiVersus officially pulled the plug on its servers, ending a chaotic three-year journey that perfectly sums up everything wrong with the publisher’s approach to modern gaming.

The platform fighter had everything going for it—beloved characters, solid mechanics, and crossplay functionality. Yet here we are, writing its obituary.

What makes this particularly painful is the sheer waste of potential. MultiVersus could have been the Super Smash Bros. killer that Warner Bros. desperately needed.

MultiVersus joins the growing live-service body count

The writing was on the wall when WB Games announced a $100 million write-down for MultiVersus earlier this year. That’s real money vanishing into the digital ether, joining the $200 million loss from Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League in what can only be described as a masterclass in how not to manage a gaming portfolio.

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MultiVersus launched in early access during July 2022 to genuine excitement. Players loved seeing Batman throw hands with Bugs Bunny while Arya Stark provided backup. The netcode was solid, the character roster diverse, and the 2v2 focus felt fresh in a genre dominated by free-for-alls.

Then came the inexplicable decision to shut down the open beta in June 2023. Player First Games promised it was temporary, claiming they needed time to rebuild the game in Unreal Engine 5. What they actually did was kill all momentum and trust the community had built up.

The May 2024 relaunch felt like watching someone try to restart a campfire with wet matches. Missing features, controversial balance changes, and a community that felt burned by the year-long hiatus created a perfect storm of disappointment. The competitive scene never recovered, and casual players moved on to other games.

Will WB Games learn from their expensive mistakes?

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? | Image Credit: Rocksteady Studios

The MultiVersus shutdown represents more than just another failed game—it’s symptomatic of WB Games‘ fundamental misunderstanding of what makes live-service titles successful. They’ve spent the last few years chasing trends instead of leveraging their incredible IP catalog properly.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League transformed Rocksteady from the beloved creators of the Arkham series into a cautionary tale about forcing single-player studios into live-service development. The result? A game that pleased nobody and cost the company a fortune.

Meanwhile, studios are closing left and right. Player First Games got shuttered in February 2025, just eight months after WB acquired them. WB Games San Diego and Monolith Productions—the studio behind the acclaimed Middle-earth games and the revered Nemesis system—followed suit, taking their promising Wonder Woman project with them.

The failures extend beyond high-profile disasters, too. Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions bombed spectacularly despite the massive popularity of the Harry Potter franchise. The fact that they couldn’t even make Quidditch appealing enough shows just how disconnected WB Games has become from what players actually want.

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The irony here is that WB Games’ biggest recent success was Hogwarts Legacy—a traditional single-player experience that sold over 30 million copies. Yet instead of learning from this success, rumors suggest they’re considering turning the sequel into a live-service experience. Apparently, three years of consecutive failures haven’t taught them anything.

The company’s obsession with recurring revenue streams has blinded them to what actually works. Players don’t want every game to be a live-service experience. Sometimes they just want a complete, polished product they can enjoy without worrying about battle passes and seasonal content!

What’s your take on WB Games’ live-service struggles? Can they turn the ship around, or are more failures inevitable? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.

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#Games #LiveService #Games #Title #Bites #Dust

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