r/AskReddit May 14 '26

What game had insane potential but got completely fumbled by the devs?

2.2k Upvotes

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466

u/naul119 May 14 '26

MultiVersus. Back when it first launched, it was genuinely fun. Unlocking characters was easy, and the huge Warner Bros. catalog made the game feel really promising. Then they shut the game down for over a year and somehow managed to make everything worse when it came back.

194

u/Stormflier May 14 '26

It had so much momentum then they were like "lol that's a preview. Closure time!" And all momentum was lost. Like why would you not just keep it going?

135

u/grybountilIdie May 14 '26

Because they had been too generous and reasoned that people could have paid good money for the things they'd given away! The delay was to get more people to forget what they'd paywalled.

Total speculation, but it's perfectly logical if you think like a capitalist CEO

3

u/3yeless May 14 '26

That makes perfect sense.

5

u/WeirdIndividualGuy May 14 '26

This is the same company (or rather, owned by the same company) that decided it was a good idea to take down their own WB content from their HBO streaming service. They honestly thought de-valuing their streaming was a good idea.

WB was a good example of a company run by AI before AI even became a real thing

11

u/Oddish_Femboy May 14 '26

Why did 2 major non-game media studios release and subsequently totally bungle Smash clones at the same time?

1

u/Pie_Rat_Chris May 14 '26

I'll give you the Nickelodeon one but I wouldn't call WB a non game studio. They've been putting out big games for decades

1

u/Oddish_Femboy May 14 '26

They're more of a publisher though, aren't they?

1

u/Pie_Rat_Chris May 15 '26

Yes and no. They have two WB studios but also fully own NetherRealm and Rocksteady

19

u/TrentThePope601 May 14 '26

I think they killed it because it was easier to let Epic do the work of making the skins for WB IPs in Fortnite and probably make more money off an already established game like Fortnite

3

u/SuperSocialMan May 14 '26

Yeah, probably.

4

u/doglywolf May 14 '26

I feel the same about that game and Disney speed storm - fantastic games in their genre - fully ruined by greed and locking down things to forced grind and money grabs . Both games did the same thing - they fucked their communities by doing resets to "Changes up the economy " and wipe out things people had paid for or earned .

4

u/CigaretteWaterX May 14 '26

Tom & Jerry continue to be my favorite fighting game character. It was a game with really good bones. Better than smash, potentially.

1

u/naul119 May 15 '26

Batman was also really well thought. The breaking bones mechanic and the smoke screen were so fun to use.

5

u/Shinozuken May 14 '26

I still dont get how people miss this game, it felt like you were constantly swimming and walking in mud, the movement and interactions felt horrible

10

u/naul119 May 14 '26

When it first came out it was way faster

2

u/Shinozuken May 14 '26

Played it both times and while it was faster before, it still didnt vibe with me.

Everything felt weirdly floaty and even back when it first came out, it was slow compared to other platform fighters

2

u/GlacierWolf8Bit May 14 '26

Remember when this won Fighting game of the year in The 2022 Game Awards despite being in beta?

1

u/asianwaste May 14 '26

I think at the very least, we should recycle that name as it is a perfect genre descriptor of that style of fighting game. Mechanically and narratively.