The MultiVersus Rises
When developer and publisher combo Play First Games and Warner Bros. Games announced that MultiVersus would be going offline for a bit of time, they weren’t kidding. The removal happened in June 2023, after which the game could no longer be played or downloaded from storefronts on consoles or PCs online, though the game remained playable locally. It went down for a far longer time than anyone could have anticipated then. It’s now March 2024, and it remains unavailable.
At least we know when it’s coming back now. After a week of teasing, Player First Games confirmed through a new development update video that the new and improved MultiVersus will release on May 28th, nearly a whole year after the original game was pulled down. The updated version will come with new characters, new stages, a new player-vs.-enemy mode, and an upgraded graphics system redone to ensure that online gameplay connections are the strongest they can possibly be. The concept art showed stages for Townsville and Dexter’s Lab from The Powerpuff Girls and Dexter’s Laboratory, respectively, perhaps a hint as to who could join among the characters. It also previewed some new character enhancements, including a new dash from Harley Quinn.
It would have been nice to get more definitive answers with the characters and stages set to join. Look, I don’t want to be a hater here, but this is an underwhelming re-reveal after a week of teases from the official Twitter account, for a game that disappeared for nearly a whole year. Given the tone of the tweets, the developers seemed like they’d have at least a couple of new characters to show off, and the in-game stages to show them fighting in. It’s a peculiarly muted tease for a game that went MIA for nine months, and it’s perhaps — maybe — not the best idea to have a good portion of The Discourse surrounding the game now being about an underwhelming first new showcase.
Not to say or imply that this tease was all pointless. It required looking between the lines, but there was worthwhile information besides the concept art for the aforementioned two stages. By the “upgraded graphics system,” PFG means they’ve moved the game from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5. It doesn’t look that much better than the prior version from the footage shown in the trailer, but there are noticeable upgrades to the character model quality, effects, and backgrounds. Despite this, they’re still supporting the releases on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, according to the FAQ on the official website. There aren’t many games using UE5 on the market right now, and fewer of them are on last-generation consoles. This will hopefully mean the game will perform well on aging hardware, running at and maintaining 60fps.
The teaser also has the feel of a presentation aimed towards the Warner Bros. board of directors and shareholders just as much as it was made for fans and potential new players — perhaps even more so for the former. That… well, it wouldn’t be a surprise if that’s the case considering who’s running Warner Bros. Discovery these days. These are people who won’t hesitate to cancel or play stupid games with animated stuff, which could extend to animation-adjacent material. Developer and publisher promotional events for AAA games and some below them are always somewhat made for the executives and shareholders to convince them that funding this initiative was a great idea prior to release. But this is one of the most overt examples I’ve seen in recent memory. But again, the developers had little choice considering who they’re dealing with.
PFG also needed to create a presentation that showed how it fit with WBD’s newest strategy of focusing heavily on live service titles, including free-to-play games that will be constantly updated over time like MultiVersus. It’s notable that WBD is doubling down on this strategy despite publicly admitting that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is putting up disappointing results thus far. This, in fact, only put further pressure on the development team considering how much the executives like to cut and write off material instead of, I don’t know, just giving them proper advertising campaigns.
This also means executives are likely to catch wind regarding how disappointed a portion of the MultiVersus community is with this new reveal. The developers are undoubtedly seeing the comments too. I’m hoping this means PFG will have a new presentation showing all the characters coming very soon, one properly displaying the new features and graphical upgrades. By “very soon,” I mean in a week — two weeks tops. The microtransactions are likely to sell themselves in a game with several popular characters from multiple Warner Bros. franchise, but that will only work for so long, as proven during the lengthy beta. It would be nice if that’s not far off, considering how soon the game is coming.
Oh, and perhaps they should clarify changes made to microtransactions too, another key reason why the beta fell off with a chunk of the community. I simply will not believe that they didn’t make any changes.
About The Author
Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
