MultiVersus Underperforms, Another $100 Million Blow for Warner Bros.
Tough time for Raven to arrive
by Khayl Adam · Push SquarePublisher Warner Bros. Discovery announced that free-to-play brawler MultiVersus (developed by Player First, which it recently acquired) has significantly underperformed, another $100 million hit to gaming revenue in 2024. Add to that the $200 million Harley and the rest of the Suicide Squad made off with, and it's been a tough year for the firm. With impeccable timing, there's an update today, with Teen Titan's Raven being added to the game.
In a financial call (thanks, IGN), CEO David Zaslav relayed the unhappy numbers and said on the subject: "... we recognise [the games business] is substantially underperforming its potential right now." CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels added further clarity: "We took another $100 million plus impairment due to the underperforming releases, primarily MultiVersus this quarter, bringing total writedown year-to-date to over $300 million in our games business, a key factor in this year’s studio profit decline."
Wiedenfels is referencing the $200 million that Suicide Squad made off with, which, if not for Concord, might have been the biggest gaming bungle of the year. Released in February, the servers are still inexplicably live, with a third season of content recently released to the chirruping of crickets. Around 1,500 people are playing MultiVersus on Steam at the time of this writing, hitting a three-month high of 5,000 back in September; that doesn't seem nearly enough to sustain the investment.
Related Articles
News MultiVersus Dev Player First Games Snagged by Warner Bros
MergerVerse
Are you a fan of MultiVersus? Are you spending real money on this free-to-play game? What is going on over at Warner Bros? Let us know in the comments section below.
[source ign.com]
- Share:
- 0
About Khayl Adam
Khayl Adam is Push Square's roving Australian correspondent, a reporter tasked with scouring the internet for the richest, most succulent PlayStation stories. With five years of experience as a freelance journalist and mercenary wordsmith, RPGs are his first great love, but strategy and tactics games are a close second, genres in which he is only too happy to specialize.
Comments 15
- 1
- OmegaStriver
- 5:33am
If they would’ve sold this game at a traditional price with the traditional amount of content ranging from $40-$70, they would’ve got some money from me.
Or
If they would’ve had every character unlocked from the beginning was a generous was of unlocking some cosmetics, and then had decent price cosmetics, They would’ve made some money from me.
With how they’ve handled it, they’ve made none.
Game studios need to learn that not every genre is feasible for live service style games. Even if Nintendo would make the next Smash Bros a live service styled game it would flop so why would the others succeed?
If you look at some of the most succesive live services games they are either on mobile where people are more willing to spend money in general or they are on the big platforms and most of the times have a huge playerbase per lobby. Making the chances big that people are willing to spend money down the line:
Apex 60 player per match
Fornite 100 per match
Warzone 60-120 per match
FF 14 I guess thousands per server
Having those numbers just results in a bigger spending rate. And then devs/publishers need to try and maintain them.
Some other games racking in billions like Genshin and ZZZ have less players per lobby, just 4 or even just 1 person playing, but still a huge playerbase due to their good content drops and great game in general (the others listed above also have that in general) and the best game design for “attractive/waifu” playable characters that people just wanna unlock.
If your base game suck (suicide squad, gotham knights) no one is going to spend a dime on it even it were free to play.
Why can’t WB just look at their huge succes with a full priced game like Hogwarts and try to replicate that with other IP’s they own? The risks they take with free to play (live service) games is not paying off while the traditional game of making games is making bank. It is such a shame because they have great IP’s.
It is just better the let other studios/pubshers just license the IP at the moment.
Rocksteady with a new Batman/Nightwing game
Green arrow in a urban Horizon game or Uncharted
Wonder-woman in a God of War game
Catwomen in a (smaller) stealth game
Flash or superman in openworld game
Teen titans in a side scrolling TMNT/streets of rage game
Detective game with Gordon
The creators of Lies of P making a dark souls type game with Doctor Fate.
Man, it just sucks that WB is not doing more with their IP’s because I really like the DC IP.
Sorry for the weird formatting, wrote this on mobile.
- 3
- RagnarLothbrok
- 5:37am
Seriously what is the obsession with live service chasing. Few ever get the success companies dream of and the rest burns tens and hundreds millions of dollars. Sony has burned billions between Bungie, FireWalk and Haven as well as the other projects
The 'losing money' streak of MultiVersus continues, what a surprise...
Also, since the article didn't show it, here's the Raven trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRw-Qvw6TsM&ab_channel=MultiVersus
Another live service failure.
Good.
All these companies are so out of touch it's crazy
Games like this will cost peanuts to develop and with the in-house licences they already have should never be running at a loss
What a mess
95% of Live service games are a money pit. Quicker devs learn this the better
- 8
- Vivisapprentice
- 7:02am
How did this game cost so much?!?
I'm wondering if Wonder Woman is cooked now
- 9
- PuppetMaster
- 7:11am
Cmiiw outside Smash and Brawlhalla, i think there's not much success for platform fighters.
This game, Nickelodeon All Star Brawl, Brawlout, and PSABR doesn't do well. But i heard Rivals of Aether did well so...maybe it's just a matter of gameplay, contents, and the moneytization? With WB, i bet they locked a lot of stuff behind expensive paywall.
I personally never like platform fighter so i don't care if they didn't do well.
- 10
- AgentMantis
- 7:27am
@RagnarLothbrok it's a license to print money if you land a hit. Genshin's top banner generated $46 million in 3 weeks, it's estimated to have made $6.3 billion over 4 years. Executives who have no real clue to what gamers want see those figures and need to change their underwear.
ahahaha 😂 that’s good. this game was a cheap cashgrab with not even a quarter of the quality of smash bros, i really don’t get how it even had hype. As big as WB is & with the type of $ they got , they could’ve done way , way , waaaay better than this indie garbage
@Vivisapprentice i have no idea how it did either. it went to waste because devs always cutting corners
- 13
- Fighting_Game_Loser
- 7:48am
@PuppetMaster No honestly I wouldn't think so that plat fighters doing well is just a matter of those factors, it's also about scope and public perception. Multiversus wanted to be the "Smash-killer" to say, but it simply can't kill Smash because Smash is well, Smash. People don't buy it for the gameplay completely, people buy it because it has Mario, Link, & Pikachu in a series that people know they can just pick up with friends for 30 minutes every once in a while. Nick All-Star Brawl I think actually did very well for itself, and the sequel did improve on everything that people complained about in the original, but it was really just like a quick fling with no regard with how people actually see the game as just a Smash "alternative" (considering how the original is still selling more than 2 because of just sale prices). Rivals is really interesting because I think Rivals is awesome, but all of Rivals 1's success with most people doesn't come from the actual game, it comes from Steam's mod support, and considering that 2 launched on Steam without Workshop Support and honestly looks a little barebones (from what I've seen of its features and content) so people are just gassing it up as a Smash killer because people haven't had any new Smash stuff since Sora released. But I think Rivals 2 is doing well as well because its a smaller title that doesn't need to worry about stuff in a similar way to NASB. It's just simply a matter of most people just only playing Smash, and seeing anything else like it as not worth the time.
Warner Bros the only studio who has total domination in single player games and total annihilation in live service games decides that the best thing to do is double down on......
Yes, Live Service games hahahha
- 15
- idiotthechef
- 23s ago
My partner and I really liked this game but fell off after it left its open beta. I imagine a lot of people did the same. It should have been a paid game and included local co-op from the off and I think it would have been a lot more financially successful.
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...