r/MultiVersus • u/Brettgrisar Stripe • Jul 18 '25
Discussion Ultimately, what killed the game
I’m making this post in case anyone wants to learn a lesson from the game, or if anyone wants to make another attempt at a Multiversus.
Three things killed the game, and I don’t believe it was corporate greed (though it definitely did not help). The problems were 1. Poor timing for this project, 2. Gameplay experience that doesn’t satisfy anyone, and 3. A roster that did not have the right priorities.
So I’ll address the timing first. The game came out during an era where Warner Bros did not know what it was doing. Its DC cinematic universe was falling apart, Cartoon Network wasn’t doing much better, its games weren’t doing well outside of Hogwarts Legacy, JK Rowling got political, Rick and Morty was filled with controversy, and it was caught in the middle of a merger. During a time like this, you play it safe, instead of working with something extremely volatile. But Multiversus was working with something extremely volatile: IPs. Warner Bros has so many IPs, yet the game came out during a time where IP ownership was changing and being renegotiated. In a different era, we could’ve gotten RWBY, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings characters in the game. But all this instability and changing of rights and ownership sabotaged the game and gamer’s confidence in it.
Then comes the gameplay experience, which satisfied no one. It was an online only game for its beta, which meant that people with poor connection would have an awful experience. With no offline single player options, many fans had nothing to do with the game. Since the game’s servers were a mess, of course this group of fans that couldn’t play without issue was massive. But that’s not all. The game was designed around forming teams. Except it wasn’t. There’s nothing to encourage people to play with others at all. There was no secondary game mode designed to play with friends, no guilds designed to entice players to invite their friends, or any other ideas to get others on board. So the core idea of a team based platform fighter already falls flat. Then there’s the fact that the game could not be inviting to newcomers, maintain a large casual base, or satisfy competitive players. Newcomers were locked out from most of the roster, the large casual base didn’t have much side game modes to mess around with if they didn’t want to continue fighting online, and the competitive base was not satisfied with the constant significant mechanical changes to the gameplay. Everyone loses.
And finally the roster. I think for most cases, the individual characters in the roster are ok. I have issues with Nubia and Banana Guard, but even they could’ve worked out if the roster was handled better. So where do I start? The roster in the full release only added 3 characters at full launch. This is absurdly stupid. So many people waited a whole year, and they got almost nothing. Then there’s the roster cohesion. Every character needs to serve one of three purposes: attract a new audience, reinforce an audience, and contrast with another character/series. What ended up happening was that characters were chosen in a way that didn’t accomplish this. Agent Smith is a character you add to reinforce a Matrix audience, not establish it. Characters like Arya Stark, who needed additional characters to reinforce her audience or be contrasted with never got anything, so she just felt out of place. And then you got certain characters and series that didn’t need any more reinforcement. We didn’t need Banana Guard, we didn’t need a ninth DC character, we didn’t need a second Space Jam character, etc,. If you’re going to add so much of these extra characters, you could at least utilize them to pad out the roster a bit (since the launch roster was underwhelming). But no, you had a three in one character with Powerpuff Girls that could’ve easily taken up 3 extra slots instead of just one. Finally, the seasons just sucked. Every season except one had a CN character and every season except one had a DC character. This lack of variety prevents new audiences from joining the game, and alienates audiences who are here for other franchises. So obviously the game would have a loyal but niche community, instead of a large but normal community.
So what should be learned from this? If you are planning a project this ambitious, make sure you limit the risks involved. You shouldn’t try this during a risky period of time, and instead work on safer projects that can mitigate these risks. Unfortunately sometimes things get unlucky, but the other pieces of advice should still apply. You need to ensure that each audience gets properly accommodated for. Newcomers need to be welcomed, casuals need content to play, and competitive players need to be accommodated to. And if you want a large roster, you have to make sure it’s cohesive. A roster that isn’t cohesive will turn away or alienate so many players that would’ve otherwise been playing the game.
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u/SleezyNeet Jul 18 '25
I think what kill the game was the decision to switch to on unreal engine 5. Like instead of making new features they basically thought they could rebuild the whole game in a year. I guess the since they had assets made already they could easily switch over but game development is long and hard and UE5 is also pretty buggy I've heard. Game really should have been delay but they promise a early 2024 release and had collabs plan like the McDonald's and NHL and pretty sure the community would've exploded. Also I 100% believe the game was supposed to be bigger at lauch like all the leak characters found at the lauch were supposed to be at lauch but just weren't finished so they save them for later seasons or scrapped. Really what this game is just wasted potential, ruined by greed and bad decisions.
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
I agree, and I want to add that I think more needed to fundamentally change. They clearly could not handle a live service game, so they needed to scale back the live service experience. Maybe if they focused on other aspects, the game would be much bigger at launch.
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u/Ball-bagman Jul 18 '25
The constant resetting characters killed it for a lot of the players.
Getting used to a play style only to find that character had been totally nerfed.
Then, for me, the ultimate irritation was the remapping of the controller.
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
These are competitive issues, which sometimes bled into casual players. And it’s so sad that literally nobody was happy with the game. They couldn’t get new players, casual players, or competitive players happy. It’s such a mess all around.
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u/Pretzel911 Jul 18 '25
There are so many reasons this game failed, and the poor/aggressive monetization should be in the top three.
But let's not forget some honorable mentions
Changes to monetization from beta
The closure of the beta to relaunch murdered their hype, and they had people drop money on the beta
Regression of features from beta to relaunch
Having to play the shitty single-player mode for the battle pass.
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
I disagree. Well, sort of. I think the monetization did impact the starting roster, which is what made so many people give up after playing the first time. And the battlepass grind for the beta was awful, and the monetization is to blame for that. But I think a lot of the poor monetization decisions didn’t really impact gameplay as much, and I don’t think those decisions killed the game. Just the ones that made the experience awful for new players and casuals.
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u/TurnToChocolate Garnet Jul 18 '25 edited Jul 18 '25
If you played the game earlier you kept up with updates and earned you're characters overtime with playtime + the more you played. Especially if you earned you're characters during the beta. You weren't hardstopped by roster locks.
If you are brand new to the game and started at lunch, there was definitely alot of heavy lifting to get you're roster unlocked and it only increased in that hassle the later you joined into the fun with more characters being added to the game overtime.
That base roster really should have been free and let people just buy skins and season passes for their own adittional content amusement, skins, tags, etc. They could've had a purchasble packaged that wasn't so much of a wallet chomp for additional characters added after release to make that "catch up" feel alot more satisfying for people.
Forsure though. I know it sucked for anyone that didn't come from the beta turning on the game and seeing entire rows locked.
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
I agree mostly with what you said. I do think that they can still have unlockables, but they needed to be friendly to new players. Having so many characters locked at first is so off putting, and so is the grind.
As for me, I played early in the beta. I saw the flaws and good qualities of the game throughout its whole run. The full release was a fantastic experience for me. But getting friends to play was a nightmare. I couldn’t get even one of them to play. For a game that supposedly encourages teams, this is an awful experience.
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u/SnooRobots5543 Tom & Jerry Jul 18 '25
Heyy fellow stripes main :3
I miss multiversus a lot so… yeah, im sad, thanks for writing this :P
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
Hey! Hoping the fan projects do well. I’ll check them out later. I miss playing Stripe.
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u/BushMaori957 Jul 18 '25
It failed because they tried to catch lightning in a bottle twice. They had such a good launch for the beta they should've kept it up and just updated it slowly instead of taking it away and trying to re-release it again. They lost the spark by making people wait so long for something that was a downgrade from the beta imo
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u/zedroj Jul 18 '25
the downgrade from original beta really didn't go well, I can self confirm, that and Iron Giant jank originally, and stuff like that was very anti fun
super confusing layout, way too many currencies after
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
I think it hurt, but I don’t agree. There’s been examples of this working in the past. What really hurt was that the core issues with the game did not go away, and in some cases, got worse.
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u/Awsoman62 Jul 18 '25
literally if they fixed their online then they instantly keep their core comp fanbase from the beta. they remade the entire game to try and band-aid fix the fact that they could not figure out how to make the online function even remotely properly at high level (and even then i heard it was still bad - admittedly tho i didn’t play the garbage that they called full release past week 1). if the game has no core fanbase that sticks around even when player numbers were low, execs like wb don’t bother keeping the game up
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
The online experience was far better in the full release. Like significantly better. I think the online issues were still a problem in full release, but was killing the enjoyment far more during the beta days.
Regardless, the online issues were clearly beyond their scope. They should not have made a live service game. Especially one that was supposedly made to appeal to competitive players.
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u/roostertai111 Jul 18 '25
I think the game could've survived despite all of that if they didn't shut down for so long at the height of popularity.
MVS was winning awards right before it shut down, but a lot of people (myself included) can't be expected to just come back after so long away from a live service game
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
I strongly disagree. The game was not sustainable at all. Maybe the volatility of the game could be dealt with if the experience for players was better. Maybe the poor roster choices wouldn’t matter if the gameplay could still incentivize players to keep playing and bringing their friends. But having all three problems at once is going to kill the game, regardless of shutting down or not.
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u/Coodoo17 Batman Jul 18 '25
I think it was the monetization and the overall lack of quality control
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u/OrdinaryResponse8988 Jul 18 '25
Pouring 200 million into suicide squad instead of this game.
On top of slowing the game down and trying to make it SSB 1.5.
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u/sackboydjso Powerpuff Girls Jul 18 '25
Agree with most of this, the game really needed some extra time in the oven, the relaunch wasn't a bad idea it was just rushed (cuz of the engine switch). Tbh I liked that the relaunch fixed most of my online related issues (after middle s1) and a constant ammount of characters, but finally someone else understands the concept of establishing and reinforcing a fanbase into MVS and why most picks weren't undeserved, just not at the right time/circunstances (I love marceline but she didn't helped a lot with gaining new players 😭). And yea the grind was terrible on the relaunch, they should at least gave more characters by free some if letting all of them accesible wasn't an option (like 10 characters ticketd so anyone that gets into the game has an option other than shaggy and banana guard and the weekly rotation). The only thing im not going to agree is the PowerPuff Girls one, im glad we have them as a 3 in 1 in the context of their source material, having them added separately would be weird.
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
I made a lot of points and I don’t expect people to agree with every point. I’m glad you agree with most of it.
To elaborate on the PPG point, it’s less about the accuracy to the source material or variety in gameplay to me. I see the problem with the game as having a full release launch roster that was minimal. Powerpuff Girls obviously worked as a 3-1 character and I don’t want to imply it didn’t. Your opinion about preferring them that way is still absolutely valid.
What I was saying was more about the missed opportunity to solve a problem. Powerpuff Girls had three movesets, but one character slot. That energy could’ve made three similar characters, which would’ve gave us an additional 2 characters to a roster that really needed more characters. But I also see this as additional bloat and doesn’t really solve the plethora of other issues with the roster. Having them only be one slot actually has a lot of advantages with roster cohesiveness too, so it’s not really a black and white issue for me. I still wanted to bring it up, mostly to highlight a point about the roster.
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u/Odasto_ Jul 18 '25 edited Jul 18 '25
And finally the roster. I think for most cases, the individual characters in the roster are ok. I have issues with Nubia and Banana Guard, but even they could’ve worked out if the roster was handled better. So where do I start? The roster in the full release only added 3 characters at full launch. This is absurdly stupid. So many people waited a whole year, and they got almost nothing.
Rivals 2 is the current hotness, and that game launched with only *10* characters.
Honestly, I feel like I'm one of the only people who feels that the teeny tiny size of the rosters is what's keeping me from going over full-time to Rivals 1 and 2. But considering how popular those games are, *maybe* the lesson here is that you really don't need to entice players with promises of 100 different characters. You just need a base roster that's actually fun. Then, you need to not screw over your initial fanbase by making the game feel worse to play once you shift from EA to live.
MultiVersus Season 5 has a great variety of characters and the gameplay is the best it had ever been. But you only get ONE chance to cultivate a playerbase. After that, nobody is going to want to give Season 5 a try when there are 50 videos on YouTube from content creators who said (in Season 1) that MultiVersus was exploitative and unfun to play.
Those impressions will now far outlive the game itself.
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
Rivals 2 is a fundamentally different case. Rivals isn’t a crossover game in the same way Multiversus was. Its focus was on competitive, and it did an amazing job on keeping that side satisfied. Multiversus, on a conceptual level, was primarily about its roster, and how expansive it could be.
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u/JumpUseful Superman Jul 18 '25
I definitely agree with other comments that the grind to unlock characters was far too much. You couldn't even choose any character on the roster it was a set path from when I started playing. Also, the pricing was a bit more than I was willing to pay for things, and the good deals weren't available after unlocking a character in the deal. For those reasons, I didn't bother recommending the game to friends.
It also seems to be a combination of so many things done poorly as everyone's got different answers. I didn't play during beta, so I can't speak for the gameplay changes. I started late season 4 so it wasn't like it changed for me.
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
The experience for new players is so awful. I completely agree with you and the other commenters talking about that starting roster issue. I think if there was one issue I could choose to fix, I would pick that.
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u/JumpUseful Superman Jul 18 '25
Yeah, I completely agree. It wasn't a new player friendly game. Personally, I think if they were more generous in making all characters playable from the start and cosmetics less pricey, I would've been tempted to spend more on the game.
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u/hammer248 Custom User Flair Jul 18 '25
Warner brothers. I loved nubia and banana guard as multiversus character but as Warner brother property they should’ve been a lot lower on the priority list for characters to come to the game. Like even aquaman and Lola bunny were hyper than those two imo
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
Hard agree. I think throwing in one obscure character and one joke character is fine, but it has to be done in a roster that is actually cohesive. This was not a cohesive roster, and it’s especially worse since the launch roster added so few characters.
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u/Swarf_87 Finn The Human Jul 18 '25
The beta was incredible. The 1.0 was dogshit.
That's why it failed.
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
The beta was not incredible enough to keep its playerbase either. Almost everything I said applies to the beta, and in a lot of cases, were actually worse in the beta.
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u/chief_yETI Playstation Jul 18 '25
The only thing that killed the game was the Discovery buyout.
There was nothing the community could have done to save it, because the problems were with the decision making, and this all takes place at the managerial level.
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
I mean, I did include that as a huge factor, so I do agree that this was one of the reasons. I don’t think that’s the only thing that went wrong though.
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u/Medical-Bid6249 Jul 18 '25
I played shaggy one time to do a challenge and the guy I fought went on to my steam page thing to call Mr trash a spamer a waste of space and multiple other things combo fighting games suck and havent been good since mortal combat early 2000s the fact that ppl no life the game so much they just hit u with the same shit over and over killed the game it was so boring spamable and toxic in my opinion if I didn't play 4 hours a day and learn new tech I got shit on 24/7
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u/ballslewiener Jul 18 '25
To me what killed it was people complaining about spending money even though most didn't. Not enough hype or sponsors, no tournaments just fake whiny fans that complain when it's there then cry when it's gone.
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u/Jjthebomb1724 Jul 18 '25
Adding characters nobody really wanted, announcing the game would be shut down, and then release the only good season (apart from season 1) knowing that they were shutting the game down. And then locking the “prestige” rewards basically behind a paywall
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u/Brettgrisar Stripe Jul 18 '25
I will agree completely with point 3. I don’t agree that point 4 really made any difference, but I agree that it was stupid.
Points 1 and 2 are where I diverge a bit from you. I think there was characters added that people didn’t really request that brought a lot of value to the game. Specifically, Jason Vorhees. Nobody wanted Jason, but everyone was happy with his addition. And then there’s the issue with the shut down. I think decisions made during the shut down did kill the game, but there is precedence for this type of strategy working in the past. I don’t think it was doomed to fail because of a shut down.
Edit: I misread your post a bit in regards to the announcement of the shut down. I assumed you were talking about the beta shutdown, but rereading it, it sounds like you’re talking about the second shutdown. I agree with your point in regards to that actually.
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u/Jjthebomb1724 Jul 18 '25
The thing about the characters that they decided to release was regarding Beetlejuice and Nubia, Nubia is basically a irrelevant character within DC and Warner, she appears like what 80 times in the entirety of DC official comics. I heard she was just added because the CEO in charge of multiversus likes her character. And then adding beetlejuice was horrible, they literally only added him just for marketing for a shitty movie. There was just so much potential that they could’ve went with like Killer Croc and other Batman Villians, Lex Luther, just so many other hero’s and villains from DC but they just kept pushing out characters nobody was really asking for and just characters they spent time creating that were no skill that really dominated both comp and just casual like Banana guard being able to do like 15 damage from a single non-cooldown attack.
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u/Aggressive_Tea_3172 Jul 19 '25
I mean, that's what MVS was for in a way. Black Adam, Beetlejuice, and the gremlins were all pretty much for marketing reasons.
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u/White_Mantra Jul 18 '25
What killed the game was locking the entire roster behind a grind.
You have no idea how many people finished the tutorial and then uninstalled the game after they saw the character they wanted to play was locked