When Warner announced MultiVersusa fighting game in the style of Super Smash Bros, the fans went crazy. It is that the proposal seemed unbeatable, at least on paper. Who could doubt the potential of a title that would allow characters like Batman, Superman, Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry, Arya Stark, Rick Sánchez or Morty Smith, among many others, to face each other in battle? However, just seven months after its launch, the video game is on its way to disaster.
According to collect VGCthis week MultiVersus dropped below 1,000 daily players on Steam for the first time. On Monday, for example, the peak was just 986 attendees; that is, 99.36% less than the 153,433 it registered on July 27, 2022, one day after the launch of its open beta.
It is true that the number of daily players of MultiVersus on Steam it has gone down in a very marked way since then, but until last Monday it had managed to maintain peaks above a thousand. However, the outlook is discouraging, considering that, at the time of writing this article, SteamDB shows a number of contestants ranging between 880 and 900 players.
But the interest in MultiVersus has not only declined among regular Steam users, but also on Twitch. In the last 24 hours, it peaked at just 812 viewers, a 99.56% drop from the record 183,069 viewers also recorded on July 27, 2022.
It is true that the drastic statistics are limited to the version of MultiVersus for PC, but the story seems not to be too different on other platforms. TrueAchivements published that the Xbox version’s player count over the past week — based on a sample of 2 million user accounts — was 4%, compared with the highest record in August 2022.
what is going on with MultiVersus?
From the beginning, we cannot say that MultiVersus is suffering the loss of daily players because it is bad. In fact, the game has received great reviews on both PC and Xbox Series X | S and PS5. And not only that, but it has won the award for “Best Fighting Game” at the Game Awards 2022.
So what is the problem that is leading to players not coming back? There does not seem to be a single identifiable cause. Although the factor that seems to be influencing the most has already become a common evil among titles free to play: the lack of new content.
The first season of MultiVersus it was released on August 15, 2022, while the second one arrived on November 15. The third was to start yesterday, February 14, but it has been delayed until March 31. This has caused huge complaints among players, especially about the lack of new characters.
Of the 24 protagonists available in MultiVersus, only 6 have been added since the start of the first season. In fact, the second season has only seen the inclusion of Marvin the Martianof the looney tunes. But the discontent is not only due to the absence of new faces, but also due to the lack of adding content to the existing ones.
Regarding the above, the most notorious case is that of Batman. This is because, after the death of Kevin Conroy, no new lines of dialogue have been added to the character. And it is unknown if it is because a new actor has not yet been chosen to replace him; or if it represents a tribute to the mythical interpreter of him.
Another aspect that has generated negative criticism has been the microtransaction system. Especially given the high price of various cosmetic items, such as skins for the main characters. Although it is not limited to it. There are also complaints about the lack of added value to the Battle Pass, compared to other free to play.
What will happen to MultiVersus? It’s still too early to tell, but for now, the outlook is not promising.