MultiVersus was at one time the most popular fighting game.The game was promising near-constant content drops and tournaments were popping up within the very first weeks of early access. It was an amazing start, but MultiVersus had a life shorter than the majority of paid fighting games. What exactly happened? Why did MultiVersus die?
At launch, the MultiVersus player count broke records. It’s now been offline for a decent span of time. The game isn’t officially dead, just resting. It was taken offline for retooling for at least a year. While the title seems to be building up for a comeback, the hype doesn’t approach its first release. So, what went so wrong with MultiVersus, we’ve got a few reasons why the game faltered.
Source: Player First Games
Why Did MultiVersus Die?
Looking at why did MultiVersus die, there are a few factors which seem to be the biggest contributors to the decline. In the rawest sense of why the game got shut down, it’s easy to see. The player count had dwindled down to basically nothing.
MultiVersus launched with some of the highest numbers we’ve seen for a fighting game, even including the huge Street Fighter 6 release. However, it couldn’t sustain this.
The game’s content just didn’t deliver fast enough to keep players engaged. The active player count began decreasing pretty quickly. Within a few months, when delays and content droughts began to get more frequent, the player count which much lower. Within 6 months of launching, it has lost around 99% of its initial players. Distareous for a live service game. Especially for one that’s not even out of early access.
As a free-to-play game, MultiVersus depends on people purchasing cosmetics and other in-game items to continue generating profit. That wasn’t happening with its player numbers where they were. The game might not have been shut down, but with its numbers in 2023, there simply wasn’t a reason to keep it up any more.
Source: Player First Games
Why Did Players Leave MultiVersus so quickly?
The answer to why did MultiVersus die is likely down to the player count getting so low, but why did so many leave? A good number leaving from that initial hype is to be expected. It was a game which a lot of players who aren’t fighting game devotees tried the title out. The game failed to cling onto a big enough core player base though.
At launch, MultiVersus promised frequent updates. Events, new characters, and other features. It launched in early access without enough features to be called a full game. There simply wasn’t enough to do. New characters got delayed pretty quickly. Then events began getting delayed. Then, even basic fixes for bugs and MultiVersus patches began to take weeks and months to appear.
The game felt abandoned.
Source: Player First Games
Despite the big promises by developers, MultiVersus was failing to deliver the level of content expected. For a title in early access hoping to make its money from in-game currency, it was a laughable level of support. The delays and droughts between anything happening in-game killed a lot of enthusiasm. Those who stuck around for the core fighting mechanics had to put up with things being broken for a long time between patches. It wasn’t a fun game to play, and the audience responded to that.
Why Did MultiVersus Die from Delays?
The neglect MultiVersus suffered is a little harder to pin down though. Some have pointed to changes in Warner Bros (the parent company of the game) ownership and how that affected other properties they owned. It’s still unknown if MultiVersus suffered any budget cuts around this time though. While the slowdown of any updates would imply the team working on the game was scaled back from the original promise, this is really more of a theory than anything confirmed.
When asking why did MultiVersus die, it’s easy to look at the overpromising of content and devs not living up to it. It seems unlikely such big promises were made without the intention to fulfil them though. As MultiVersus failed to live up to expectations, players decreased, so support decreased. This will lead to more players leaving, and just circularly exasperating the problem. With the devs behind the game still working on bringing it back though, MultiVersus isn’t entirely written off just yet. In fact things are finally beginning to look up.
When is MultiVersus Coming Back?
That’s an answer to why did MultiVersus die, or at least why it’s currently dead. The game is still being worked on though. Developers, Player First Games, are still actively working to relaunch the game in 2024. This time as a completed project. This should hopefully mean a considerably more fleshed-out title than it was originally.
Source: Player First Games
Earlier this year, we got our first hints of this. We started to see a MultiVersus McDonalds promotion, out in the wild. While McDonalds internationally is (for some reason) advertising the title, the game still doesn’t have a return date. We can expect to hear something soon though.
The big question when MultiVersus does come back is if it can sustain a player base this time around. It can’t make the same mistakes. The new launch won’t have the same novelty that it originally did. Developers will have to ensure there’s enough for players to do to try and rebuild the game’s player base. Hopefully, they can finally deliver on the early promise of the game.
This article was originally published here
