Warner Bros. Games To End Service For Crossover Fighter ‘Multiversus’, Announces Players Will Still Be Able To Play Offline ONLY If They Grab The ‘Smash Bros.’ Clone Prior To Shutdown
To the surprise of practically no one who actually tried to engage with its clunky gameplay and greedy in-game economy, Warner Bros. Games has announced that just a little under a year after bringing it back from its first shutdown, they will officially and finally ending service on their IP-centric Super Smash Bros. clone MultiVersus.
The end of WB’s crossover fighter was first announced on January 31st by way of an official news post made to the game’s official website.
Therein, the game’s developer, Player First Games, collectively informed MultiVersus players that, “After careful consideration, our next Season will serve as the final seasonal content update for the game.”
“MultiVersus Season 5 will begin on February 4, 2025, and run through May 30, 2025, adding two new playable characters to the roster – DC’s Aquaman and Looney Tunes’ Lola Bunny,” they explained. ” All new Season 5 content, including Aquaman and Lola Bunny, will be earnable through gameplay. Both new characters will be accessible when Season 5 begins on February 4 at 9 a.m. PST – Aquaman via the Battle Pass as the first tier reward and Lola as the daily calendar login reward.”
As a result of this decision to end service on MultiVersus, the game’s online servers are also on the road to being unplugged, with non-local multiplayer modes set to become null and void with the May 30th conclusion of the game’s fifth season.
Yet, far from wiping the game’s entire existence from the history books DC Crisis style, MultiVersus will still be available for offline play, either against an AI or other local players.
However, this crumb of good will comes with a rather significant catch, as players who wish to continue enjoying the game in the future will have to both download the game and log in to its servers prior to shutdown.
“To do this, you’ll need to install/download the latest version of the game and log in during Season 5, any time between February 4 at 9 a.m. PST and May 30 at 9 a.m. PDT,” wrote the devs. “After logging in, a local save file will be automatically created connected to your PlayStation Network, Microsoft Store, Steam, or Epic Games Store account, allowing you to enjoy the game offline with all earned and purchased content moving forward.”
“Additionally,” they further noted, “when Season 5 finishes, the game will no longer be available to download via the PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, Steam, or Epic Games Store.”
While the game’s shut down proper is still a few months away, the same cannot be said of its in-game economy, which has disabled the ability for players to exchange real money for premium currency (known as Gleamium) effective immediately.
“As of today, January 31, real money transactions will no longer be available for MultiVersus, which means you can no longer purchase Gleamium,” explained the WB Games employees, “but you can still use remaining Gleamium or character tokens to access in-game content until Season 5 ends on May 30 at 9 a.m. PDT.”
Given the the admittedly confusing language of this last bit, it’s currently unknown whether the MultiVersus shutdown will remove the ability for players to obtain additional characters or costumes all together or provide an alternative, offline means of unlocking them.
As noted in the latest update to the game’s official FAQ, players wishing to gain offline access the game on multiple platforms are free to do so, but they must “make sure to complete the process on each respective platform”.
Player First Games has also assured players that despite its removal from storefronts, players who successfully add the game to their respective digital accounts will still be able to re-download the MultiVersus game file itself at their leisure, even if they delete the initial install.
Notably, the end of MultiVersus comes a little under three months after Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels publicly admitted that the platform fighter was struggling to keep player interest.
Addressing the the company’s current financial health during its November 7th Q3 2024 Earnings Call, Wiedenfels acknowledged that their Studio Segments (which encompasses their film, television, and video game operations) performance that quarter “subpar relative to our internal expectations, notwithstanding the difficult comparisons with [the massive box office results of] Barbie last year” and confirmed that “results were impacted by games for which we took another $100 million plus impairments due to the underperforming releases, primarily MultiVersus this quarter, bringing total write-downs year-to-date to over $300 million in our games business, a key factor in this year’s Studio profit decline.”
And thus, with a whisper and not a bang, ends the very brief legacy of MultiVersus.
All in all, while it wasn’t a particularly enjoyable game (their method of ‘holding inputs to do even a quick special move’ will go down as one of the worst in gaming history), at the very least, the dev team at Player First Games can take pride in the fact that they gave us some of the best digital renditions of Superman and Wonder Woman’s Black Lantern forms.
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