The Best Fighting Game of 2022 is facing some major decline compared to its impressive launch sales. It was one of the most anticipated games with its strong, popular IP. All Warners Brothers characters ranging from Tom and Jerry to Gremlins to Iron Giant to Game of Thrones. The game also included its original character, Reindog. Many players have been burnt out from the game, resulting in over 90% of Multiversus players leaving Steam. One of the most anticipated games is now falling into obscurity, similar to Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl.

Start of the Multiversus Journey

Multiversus had one of the biggest launch sales for a platform fighter. The result was over 20 million downloads across consoles and Steam in one month. Over 150,000 players were playing Multiversus on Steam, making it more successful compared to other platform fighters like Brawlhalla (34,168 players) and Rivals of Aether (2,828 players)

Season one started strong with Player First Games’ ambitious promise to make a new character every two weeks. Rick, Morty, Gizmo, Stripe, and Black Adam were released at their appropriate set date. The balance updates did normalize a few outrageous characters like Jake the Dog and Tom & Jerry. Though once the game reached Season 2, the dev support started to dwindle significantly.

The Barren Season

In November 2022, the company’s support drastically changed during the recent season. The game’s only new content came from outside of Earth, Marvin the Martian. He is an assassin type with wacky moves that include using his alien artillery, including his flag to reign his dominance. After releasing the cartoony alien, no other character was announced. 

The developers gave little effective support to the game’s content, making season 2 appear empty for over three months. Meta characters like Bugs Bunny and Arya Stark were still dominating online. This meta annoyed pro players while scaring off newer gamers. No effort was made to fix the unstable servers which frustrated many supportive players. 

The start of the new year didn’t fair much better for the game. Recently, the devs announced the extension of Season 2 from February 14 to March 31. The realization of no significant changes forced many players to leave the game, dropping Steam’s player count to just 1% from its peak of 153,433. Several YouTube content creators like gsmVoiD and Slush slowed their Multiversus content due to little content variety and small viewerships.

How to Regrow Popularity

A few reasons made several players abandon the game in its current state. One of the major problems involves minor balance updates. The various patches in season 1 only changed a few metacharacters like Jake the Dog and Taz. Other high tiers like Bugs Bunny and Harley Quinn survived their nerfs and continued their reign online. The low tiers like Steven and Reindog were forced to rot in the bottom meta with little buffs. There weren’t any satisfying changes to shift the game’s meta, making the battles feel frustrating and dull.

Online server stability is another issue holding the game back severely. The game uses rollback netcode to make online fights smoother without lag through computer prediction. The major problem comes from the netcode integration, having players fly across the stage without any control. Dealing with the unstable online frustrates players, especially within 2v2-based fighters. 

A recurring issue has been their ever-changing roadmap. First Player Games is a new, small indie company trying to develop an ambitious platform fighter. That said, making that the reason behind the delayed updates isn’t always acceptable. Though season one had good content, it never came out on time. The same problem is happening with Season 3, which makes the company less trustworthy.

Another flaw with the game is the outrageous prices. The game is free-to-play, so it must include microtransactions and paid cosmetics. What’s good about the paid content is that they don’t affect the gameplay. The bad news is the prices can be as high as $15 for one costume. There’s no other way to earn the costumes by playing the games and accomplishing daily missions. The only method is to pay real-life money.

Any Possible Multiversus Update

There may be a reason behind the lack of communication and direct support. Due to being a new indie company, abrupt problems could appear with their fixes to specific issues, including online servers. Another difficulty for the developers would be acquiring the right characters for the players. It isn’t easy to earn specific, hype-inducing Warners Brothers characters, though time is of the essence for the game.

Season 3 is coming, though it might be the last hope for the game’s survival. Despite such success at launch, its player base is dropping significantly. This decline coincides with the growing communities of Brawhalla and Rivals of Aether. 

Multiversus must fix its balances and server stability to grow its player count again. There have been other live service games that had their support shut down entirely. If the upcoming patch doesn’t satisfy the whole player base, that might be all for the game’s support.

Multiversus can be played on Steam, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5

By Brandon Williams

Ever since I've played on the PS2, I've enjoyed a variety of games from the consoles huge library, including Sly Cooper, Jak and Daxter, SMT, and many more. My most played console has been the Nintendo switch, which holds more satisfying animated games for my gaming tastes. My favorite interests include RPGs and fighting games, resulting in the Xenoblade series and Smash Bros as my top favorite games to play.