MultiVersus left for a year, came back different and fans aren’t sure

The strange story of MultiVersus continues. The game was strange enough to begin with: a free-to-play, on Smash Bros. Adventure Time And Game of Thrones – there’s even LeBron James.

A successful open beta launched in 2022, but in June 2023 it was taken offline for almost an entire year for a complete overhaul – an unprecedented move for a live service game that seemed out of proportion to the work it required. Now it’s back and fans are surprised, to say the least, at how much has changed.

Some changes are a matter of taste. Many players on the MultiVersus subreddit and elsewhere say that the game has slowed down dramatically – which is also Polygon’s impression, based on a quick playtest – and while this change not popular with manynot everyone agrees.

But what has really alarmed the game’s fanbase is that this new “launch” version of MultiVersus has returned missing features and settings that were present in the open beta – and that radical changes have been made to progression and the way characters are unlocked.

So far, developer Player First Games has only responded to feedback about the missing features. Game director Tony Huynh posted on X to reassure fans that features such as team colours, end-of-game stats, customizable input buffer settings and the option to switch sides and neutral attacks are ‘coming in’. Huynh explained that the extensive rebuild required the team to move the game from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5, leaving the developers without time to implement every feature before the relaunch date.

“Many of these features are currently deployed and in testing and we had planned for it but were left out due to time constraints as we had to rebuild every screen and feature to support our new netcode and Unreal Engine 5 switch,” he said. In response to player questions, Huynh indicated that the next patch would address performance issues, and that a spectator mode was also in development.

But Player First Games is silent on what is perhaps the most common complaint from players, which is that progression – both unlocking new characters and leveling up the characters you have – is painfully difficult. The main way to unlock new characters (rather than purchasing them) is by earning Fighter currency by playing the new PvE Rifts mode, while character XP is awarded for completing dailies and quests, but not for participating in competitions. PvP match play, yes MultiVersus‘ central and most popular mode, so excluding it from both forms of progression has severely slowed the rate at which most players can earn and upgrade new characters.

The final point of frustration for players is perhaps the least surprising. In the open beta, Player First Games has generously unlocked everything MultiVersusfighters in the game’s offline local play mode. That is no longer the case, players leaving without a way to try out fighters before you buy them – and fighting game tournament organizers face high costs if they want to make the full game available for competitors to play.

Looking for ways to bring back more revenue from this free-to-play game is one of the easier to understand (if still disappointing) decisions WB Games has made lately. Taking a popular game offline for a year because of an arguably unnecessary engine swap (among other things) is not. Polygon has contacted Player First Games and WB Games for comment.