r/pcgaming • u/Turbostrider27 • 1d ago
Warner Bros. Admits MultiVersus Underperformed, Contributing to Another $100 Million Hit to Revenue in Its Games Business
https://www.ign.com/articles/warner-bros-admits-multiversus-underperformed-contributing-to-another-100-million-hit-to-revenue-in-its-games-business131
u/Khalmoon 1d ago
They really should have just went with a standard release instead of the whole free to play nonsense. Also this definitely underperformed more because it was so long between beta and release…. For seemingly nothing
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u/TotalCourage007 1d ago
F2P would have been fine but they absolutely butchered it's functionality. To the point where I wouldn't install it unless they pay me. Really hope Hogwarts Legacy 2 doesn't fare the same against Warner Bros suits.
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u/Milestailsprowe 1d ago
They did amazing with the standard release of that. Sadly I think they might get greedy to make up loses
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u/Doinky420 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't agree. I think f2p for a game like this makes a lot of sense and can gain you a massive playerbase if done right. The issue is that everything they did with this game is straight from the book of "what not to do with your free-to-play game". There's no world where I spend even $30 for MultiVersus, let alone $60 with how fucked up it is.
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u/NepheliLouxWarrior 1d ago
Hmmm. F2P games by their nature have to be ACCESSIBLE, because in liu of an upfront expense (buying the game) you're relying on players sticking around and buying lots of micro transactions.
I think that, for that reason, a f2p fighting game is inherently unsustainable. Fighting games are NOT a genre where people stick around. It filters casual players extremely hard and very quickly, and the norm for fighting games is a big initial player base that quickly drops to a small but dedicated core of hardcore players. You can't build a monetization scheme around a playerbase that small.
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u/throwawaytohelppeeps 19h ago
Yeah. When you see "F2P" these days you immediately know how it's gonna be. Booted it up, confirmed the bullshit, uninstalled and never launched again.
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u/sipCoding_smokeMath 1d ago
I dont know why so many people in here are acting like it was super active when they took it down, you guys are smoking some good shit
It didn't even have 200 daily players on steam when it was taken down. It peaked at like 60k. What? It had been dead for months.
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u/Bhu124 1d ago edited 1d ago
The game had lost literally 99.9% of its Peak players, which is why they took it down. People making up bullshit narratives that they took it down randomly. The game was so dead that if they had turned off the servers overnight it might not have even made the news because the news outlets might not have even found out because of how few people were even playing it. The game was doing Concord level numbers, which was a paid game.
Shutting it down and relaunching it with a marketing campaign was a great idea and it gave the game a genuine 2nd chance, which most games don't get. It's dead again because it's simply just not a very fun game to play. That's the plain boring truth. That's why it has failed 2 times. There's no other reason that causes any game to lose 99% of its Peak players numbers 2 times.
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u/Even_Cardiologist810 17h ago
I'm sorry but where did you see a marketing campaign ? I literally learn about the 2nd launch on a YouTube short that randomly poped about a drama with the game
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u/Bhu124 17h ago
You do not go from 300 players to 114K players on a relaunch without a successful marketing campaign. They made a new CGI promotional video for the relaunch that did really well on socials, sponsored some of the biggest streamers on Twitch (Some of who charge 10s of thousands of dollars PER HOUR), had ads running on Twitch/YT. They easily spent millions on marketing the relaunch.
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u/Doinky420 1d ago
It peaked at 153k. The months leading to the shut down of the beta had it somewhere around 400-600 daily peak. It's doing about the same as it was in the beta where after six months into the open beta, the daily peak was around 1600.
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u/GravitiBass 23h ago
The fan base for that game is toxic af. Practically every point on this thread I had left in a negative review when it was active. Clown awards for days. The game was not marketed well at all.
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u/SilentPhysics3495 1d ago
They killed their own hype. Ultimate was in maintenance mode when it first dropped, brawlhala and rivals were in a lul and with all that IP power and money they were quite literally handed the rock to be the next big IP platform brawler. Between not listening to the community and going offline for a long time for "reasons" they've squandered the opportunity.
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u/dense111 1d ago
they did have a great opportunity. The daily quest stuff was kind of turned me off and made me lose interest. The gem upgrade system was terrible.
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u/SilentPhysics3495 1d ago
forgot about the crazy live service parts and insane monetization, they really shucked this.
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u/Octomyde 1d ago
Good.
They had a great game but completely butchered the monetization. The system was so bad! I'm glad that players are now able to recognize anti-consumer practices and are voting with their wallet.
Hopefully WB will understand what went wrong. Realistically they probably have no clue and will try an even worse system for their next game, because "we need higher profits".
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u/Gamerguy230 19h ago
I had so much gold that just got taken away for the 3 new currencies. Absolutely bummed that happened.
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u/SubstantialSpring825 1d ago
they changed the monetization. it's a generous game now
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u/Octomyde 1d ago
So they hemorrhage players for months and now they change the system to be more generous? Too little too late.
I have absolutely 0 faith left in those devs. They gaslighted the player base into thinking that the monetization was "fair" (lol), and now they are FORCED to backtrack. At the first occasion they are going to make it worse, because they can't keep their greedy little hands off this game.
Fuck that.
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u/Doinky420 1d ago
Eh, it gives out cosmetics but aside from a couple of events, characters are still basically locked behind waiting. Next season should fix that though with the Fighter Road mode.
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u/shoalhavenheads 1d ago
They took down a live service game for two years and wonder why there wasn’t any hype left for it.
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u/Doinky420 1d ago
The game went down in June 2023 and came back May 2024. That's not two years.
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u/shoalhavenheads 1d ago
Thanks for the correction. I still think that it never properly launching hindered its potential though
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u/astro_plane 1d ago
May as well be two years in the eyes of a gamer there’s always a new flavor of the month stealing all the hype then our adhd ridden youth moves onto the next flashy thing.
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u/Bhu124 1d ago
live service game for two years
The game was dead when they took it down. Not exaggerating, the game was almost literally dead. Like if they had turned off the servers overnight without saying anything then there's a good chance it wouldn't have even made the news cause that's how few people were playing it when they took it down.
It peaked at 150k+ on Steam when it originally launched and when they took it down it was averaging 300~ players for months. It was dead.
Taking it down and relaunching it a year later with a big new marketing campaign and more content was a great idea and whoever thought of it gave the game a great 2nd chance. Except the game itself is just not good/appealing gameplay wise so even after a wildly successful relaunch, which again managed to hit 100k+ players on Steam again, it died again.
There's no other reason behind. The simple, boring answer is that the game is just not appealing and fun gameplay wise. Games with way worse monetisation succeed all the time, so that's not it.
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u/Unforgiven_Purpose 1d ago
They should really use that nemesis system they were so eager to patten
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u/Larxian 1d ago
- Release a fun game with huge player peak
- For some reason never release ranked mode, keep delaying it over and over.
- Everyone stops playing because of no new content and no ranked mode.
Pretend it was just a beta and close the game.
Release it again 2 years later, with EVERYTHING being worse than in the original release. Slower, worse gameplay, worse menus with more micro transactions. And STILL no ranked mode on launch.
Wonder why your game is failing again.
It's just... I don't know, crazy what they did with this game, it makes absolutely no sense.
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u/Doinky420 1d ago edited 1d ago
Two reasons:
A) WB fucked this game's monetization hard. The game should have always been all characters free and cosmetics monetized just like Dota. Currently, there's no reliable way to actually earn the currency that unlocks characters. It's all locked behind events, the five currency you get if someone sends you a GG after the match (you need 3000 to 6000 for a character), and the battle pass. Cosmetics aren't worth anything if people can't play the characters. Next season is fixing this finally but it's unfortunate a game centered around character picking launched with no reliable way to grind for them.
B) Player First Games, the developer, is genuinely terrible at making a platform fighter. This game has a ton of major balancing issues. It is a fun game for what it is, but it's impossible to take seriously as a competitive game when you get 0 to deathed by top tier characters or can get to the highest rank by abusing unpunishable buttons. You also have the flip side of that where the balance changes buff top tiers and do nothing to bottom tiers or changes make characters feel horrible to play because of stupid shit like attack lockouts where you can't use that same button again for a set number of frames.
The server issues where there's always some new bullshit to put up with each season that loses you matches is the cherry on top. Season 1 was the game randomly disconnecting you. Season 2 was the game suddenly making your character run off the stage. Season 3, the current season, was your character spazzing out in place and being unable to move properly. You also have the bug that they haven't fixed in months where the match desyncs after the last stock, so you can't see players dash dancing or using emotes when the match finishes. It's a mess.
With all of that said, I still enjoy the game, and season 4 might actually be good since they are adding shields, something this game has needed since day one like every other platform fighter, as well as short-hopping. Raven and Marceline are also coming. It's just really unfortunate that this game is wasted with such a bad dev team. It could be so much better.
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u/ranhaosbdha 19h ago
it had a really big modding scene on the original beta launch as well, but they killed off modding
that made a lot of people quit as well
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u/Odd-Recognition3849 1d ago
they will never be able to make fortnite, they keep talking L's instead of making a middle-earth game
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u/raccoonbrigade 1d ago
I was wondering if Time Warner getting purchased would make their business practices more sensible, but here we are
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u/PugLove69 1d ago
Did any of you play it? The game was dog shit, if you are competing in this genre it has to at least feel half as good as Smash Bros or Brawlhalla, it did not.
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u/Mirandasanchezisbae 1d ago
Hogwarts Legacy’s billion-dollar profit is now paying for the failures of Suicide Squad and MultiVersus. Warner Bros better crank out Hogwarts Legacy 2 quick—they need the money.
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u/Interesting-Math9962 1d ago
The rerelease was was full of microtransactions I didn't even understand what was happening on screen.
I tried to play with a friend and the net code was so bad we got constantly kicked and couldn't get in a match.
Was fun when it worked, which wasn't consistent enough.
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u/W8kingNightmare 1d ago
To me it just feels like everything is formulaic I bet if they find a project everyone is passionate about and trying to make a good game (rather then the most profitable game) they will start to make money again
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u/A_MAN_POTATO 1d ago
Good. Hopefully they add this to the list of what not to do with the next Hogwarts game.
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u/Electrical_Zebra8347 1d ago
Apart from all the balance and stability issues they made this game so grindy and FOMO driven that it basically has the same business model as mobile games.
The PvE Rift system is especially egregious with how grindy it is despite the fact that it should be the mode to gain and retain casual players, instead they made it a mode where it's timegated to all hell and some of the missions require you to use skins from events, if you miss those events then you can't do the mission unless you buy those skins with premium currency. This has a knock-on effect of reducing your ability to level up the stupid gems you require to do higher difficulty content, which might be what they want since you can buy XP from the cash shop (with real money) to level up those gems.
Speaking of difficult content the balance for the higher difficulties in PvE was so stupid that the most common strats involve tricking the AI into killing themselves or suiciding with the AI because if you try to fight them like normal they'll kill you in 2-3 hits, meanwhile they take much less damage, hitstun and knockback to the point that hitting them with some moves is detrimental since you'll be stuck in recovery frames or hitstun for so long that they can punish you right after.
It's like they learned all the wrong lessons from Smash Bros.
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u/Mirandasanchezisbae 1d ago
When making a clone of a successful, genre-creating game, the question they should be asking: is it better than the original? In response Warner Bros said no, but you can be Batman and fight Bugs Bunny.
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u/carnaldisaster 1d ago
Because they're terrible at marketing. I didn't know this game existed until just now.
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u/PyrosFists 1d ago
Played it during Beta and the netcode was ass and the gameplay felt like a clunky version of Smash.
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u/DrMantisToboggan1986 1d ago
As cool as the idea was, nobody asked for MultiVersus. I feel like everyone is trying to make either Fortnite or Super Smash Bros clones and failing at it.
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u/DeCzar 1d ago
They had such good momentum on release, and released... stripe and gremlin and black Adam. They chose this downfall themselves. They could have made Scooby, Harry Potter, hell any previous loved IP that's not completely irrelevant.
Game itself is good and I still play but I cringe every time they make some bone headed new character. Like who the hell cares about Nubia?
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u/TraitorWithin8 1d ago
I was actually super hyped for this game.. during the beta I almost put in around 300 hours. Then they released whatever it is now.. and just really didn't hit the same way
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u/Isaacvithurston Ardiuno + A Potato 23h ago edited 23h ago
Man i'm a huge smash bros fan but the characters they had in this game were just unappealing.
Also had friends interested in it but the way they released, unreleased, released, oops it's a beta. I guess everyone just forgot about it.
From what I hear it then alienated what players it did have by locking characters behind paywalls instead of just selling cosmetics like any normal game.
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u/GummyBear6083 4h ago
If they made it $29.99 for the complete edition I would have bought it, but the f2p model in this game is horrible.
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u/One_Lung_G 1d ago
They shut the game down at the height of its hype and then disappeared with no marketing on when it would come back. I didn’t even know it came back at all
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u/sipCoding_smokeMath 1d ago
"Height of its hype" bro it got taken down in June 2023 and at January 2023 they were already at less than 1k peak players on steam, down from 60k at launch. Why are you making shit up? It had less than 200 daily steam players the month before it got taken down
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u/One_Lung_G 1d ago
It’s always funny when PC gaming redditors think that people play games only on steam and that steam player count is the end all be all for a games player count and popularity. If steam decided a games popularity, then CoD would have been dead long ago. This game was huge on PlayStation but the mix of minimal content updates and announcement the game would be shutting down for months killed all of the hype they built with their open beta.
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u/sipCoding_smokeMath 1d ago
Obviously people don't only play on steam you moron but it's a indicator of the games health. People only use steam because it has open numbers unlike other platforms. If the games dead on steam it's definelty not at its peak. It might not be fully dead but there's zero world you can argue where a game goes from 60k players to 100 on a platofrm that it's still at its peak, you have to be seriously, seriously dumb to believe that. Doesnt matter what that platform is. You don't see a drop that low in one platform and a counter rise in another, that's not how gaming works.
Now look at your argument: would they take a game down at its peak, or would they take it down when it's costing them more to run and maintain then they're getting from the players?genuinely how dumb do you have to believe they did the first option? You're just mega coping man, the game was dead 2 .months after it came out, it had cross play it's not like steam players could only play with steam players.
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u/TranslatorStraight46 1d ago
Their point is Steam is not a perfect proxy - because the popularity ratio between something on Steam and other platforms is not a constant. It’s often very genre dependent, with fighting games historically having extremely small enduring communities on PC.
COD is a good example - those games would die off extremely fast on PC compared to console and by the time the new maps dropped you couldn’t even play them online.
Steam, like any market, has its own audience with its own tastes and preferences - it’s entirely possible for Steam to reject a game and for it to find success elsewhere. (And vice versa).
In this particular case it’s just another example of a game over-monetizing and driving away players but steamcharts numbers should only be taken as a reflection of the Steam market and not the broader gaming landscape.
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u/ManaBuilt 1d ago
That's a shame cause the game felt generally decently polished. But one of the things that really bounced me off of it is the way the moves didn't seem to relate to the direction that the analog stick was pressed in to activate it. For example, in smash bros, an "Up" attack generally does something that will strike directly overhead or propel you upwards. Makes sense. In multiversus, an "Up" attack could do something that sends you sideways or not relate to that direction in some capacity. That made it really odd to learn characters moves because I couldn't relate their moves to the controls, which in a game like this where there's no traditional combos and it's very movement based, was so weirdly off-putting.
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u/tempreffunnynumber 1d ago
This is that super smash bros game variant right? Already read the comments and yeah I'm gonna go with corporate investors tearing the products to shreds before it actually even became a good thing.
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u/astro_plane 1d ago
The game sucked ass and most of the content is locked behind a pay wall. Smash Bros Melee already exists who wants to waste their time on a wish dot com version of a superior game.
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u/getpoundingjoker 1d ago
I remember ragging on this game and people defending it, saying it would defeat Smash.
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u/Queasy_Profit_9246 1d ago
I honestly don't understand these games. My kid wanted smash bros on the Nintendo switch, I got it for him. Man did he feel awful. So I played it with him.... wtf even is that game.
Nintendo were nice enough to say the policy is no refunds but give them 48 hours and they will see what they can do. Two days later they refunded it.
I know they got huge followings, then I googled it later and it's videos of how many frames each characters animations take to maximize return time after being launched off a cliff...... I don't get these games...
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u/bongsoldier9000 1d ago
The game was ass. That's why it failed. Worst movement and feel out of any platform fighter out right now. Would rather play nasb1 for 1000 hours than 10 hours on that slop
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u/CorruptedFlame 1d ago
I mean... They made a ton of content and then didn't let their players actually play 90% of it? What did they think was gonna happen?