YouTuber Vara Dark Weighs In On Claims ‘Marvel’s Avengers’ Will Shut Down After 3.0 Update: “That’s What Happens When You Don’t Listen To Consumers”
YouTuber Vara Dark has discussed insider claims that Marvel’s Avengers may have no further content after upcoming 3.0 update and will, therefore, be shutting down.
The claims came via The Lunch Table podcast, talking to leaker Miller — who boasts on social media about being cited by Yahoo Finance, Forbes, IGN, and more thanks to his insider sources. During the podcast, the leaker freely discussed how even on launch Marvel’s Avengers felt incomplete, having scaled down from a much larger project that was struggling to meet the release date even before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Miller states he focused on Marvel’s Avengers due to his ADHD, and his desire to learn more information meant him turning to both cut and upcoming content, data-mining, contacting developers, and denouncing what content creators had claimed about the game.
When discussing the lack of new enemies to fight, even with new content (22:38), Miller was asked if the developers would “change it up” from A.I.M. “I gotta tell you, I’m not sure we ever will,” Miller revealed. After a brief hesitation, Miller continued “there’s only so much I can say, I’ve had conversations in the last few weeks, that paint kind of a grim picture for the future.”
“I’m working on a story, always,” Miller teased,” but I was on record a couple of months ago saying I don’t think we’re gonna make it to the 4.0 update series, like I really don’t see it. And that’s over a year away! We still have the whole 3.0 update series to get through.” This would suggest Miller’s earlier fears had been confirmed.
Miller claims, “What I can tell you is the next ‘A.I.M. bots’ [enemies] in the game, are set to be the Kree. Definitely.” He later added that while She-Hulk was planned to be released after Black Panther (and allegedly Ultros content), but this changed after “staffing changes” in November. This resulted in a “new strategy” with new content, “dropping everything” and making Jane Foster instead.
When that was poorly received and didn’t “meet goals,” Miller also claims members of the brand management team insisted Winter Soldier was always intended to be next in the pipeline. Miller claims She-Hulk is “being held” until development resources “are so large they can create a sole original kit for her,” unlike Jane Foster who reused assets from other characters.
PlayStation Lifestyle ran with the headline that She-Hulk was delayed due to budget issues, further damning Marvel’s Avengers’ name.
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The lack of future for Marvel’s Avengers is likely due to how it was received. Miller later continued to discuss how the game was “doomed from the start” as Square Enix attempted to make “Marvel Destiny, and they did it with a team that was half the size” — even then being “creatively bankrupt.”
Miller also notes Marvel mobile games were advertised more than Marvel’s Avengers, and even accuses Square Enix’ budgets and business plans “don’t make sense.” The recent arrests for former employees’ insider trading gave Miller further reason to ponder.
For everyone else, however, Marvel’s Avengers was heavily criticized on launch and continues to be criticized to this day. Players felt it was a bland and repetitive experience and the live-service business model made things even longer to grind when not paying out. The story divided players between being adequate, dull, or unbelievable. Being littered with bugs and performance problems didn’t help much either.
Square Enix announced in late 2020 that they made a $48 million loss that quarter. Their only major release at the time was Marvel’s Avengers. It wasn’t until a few days later that it was confirmed the game failed to offset development costs. Square Enix President Matsuda admitting a year later the game “produced a disappointing outcome.”
Miller agreed (46:42) that Marvel’s Avengers had been going downhill since launch, with the War for Wakanda content in August being “the biggest fanfare the game will ultimately ever gotten post-launch.”
Comicbook.com added in their report that — based on what they “understand” from their undisclosed sources — the game has an ever shrinking “skeleton crew.” More developers continue to be pulled onto other Crystal Dynamics projects, and Comicbook.com theorizes Winter Soldier may be the final DLC character, despite rumors of She-Hulk.
Even then, CBR reported the rumor that She-Hulk had been delayed due to budget issues.
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Vara Dark explained in her video that without any more characters or content, Marvel’s Avengers services may be shut down. She also notes the game had failed to fix its bugs and performance issues, and that nearly every decision made on characters and changes to the monetization was met with yet-more backlash.
“It just seems like this game isn’t bringing any money in, and that’s what happens when you don’t listen to consumers, and you rush out a game for the Holiday season […] and you just don’t put the effort into it.”
On She-Hulks delay, Vara adds “like I mentioned, they were planning on adding characters that were being introduced into comics, TV series, all of these different things — and now they can’t even afford to do that.” Even an endgame mission came out two years later than initially promised.
“It seems like they’re just pushing out all of the content they have to wrap-up this game in the next few weeks, I’m sure they’ll announce they’re finally killing it off,” Vara proposes, adding, “only time will tell, but if I was an active player of this game, I’d be pretty p—ed right now. Because — while, yes, you’re getting this content — it’s years after they were initially supposed to release it.”
“We have seen a lot of live-service games fail over the years, but this has to be one of the worst, no one is gonna forget about this any time soon.”
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