The Daily Populous Saturday February 1st, 2025 morning edition
Authored by gamesindustry.biz and submitted by samiy2k

The Warner Bros. platform fighting game, MultiVersus, will shutdown on May 30, according to a statement by developer Player First Games.The game was released on May 28, 2024.

"We have an important update to share regarding MultiVersus. After careful consideration, our next Season will serve as the final seasonal content update for the game," said a post on the company's official blog.

"All of us on the Player First Games and Warner Bros. Games teams have poured our heart and soul into this game. We will be forever grateful for the incredible support of the MultiVersus community throughout this journey."

For players, online features will remain accessible until the end of the game's Season 5, on May 30 at 9am PST. Real money transactions for the game will cease as of today. Players will still be able to play an offline version of the game, solo or against AI, if they download the latest version of the game and log in before May 30.

Late last year, Warner Bros. Discovery President and CEO David Zaslav and Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels was clear that the game was not performing as expected.

"Results were impacted by games, for which we took another $100+ million impairment due to the underperforming releases – primarily MultiVersus – this quarter, bringing total writedown year-to-date to over $300 million in our games business, the key factor in this year’s Studios profit decline," Zaslav said.

"In Q4, we expect games to be flat to modestly better year-over-year, as last year’s launch of Hogwarts Legacy on the Switch platform in November is offset by lower costs."

"But even in an industry of hits and misses, we must acknowledge that our studio business must deliver more consistently," he added. "This applies to our games business, which we recognise is substantially underperforming its potential right now."

Trout-Population on January 31st, 2025 at 21:30 UTC »

By all rights this game should have been a liscence to print money. They fucked up so hard by inserting the grossest monetization into it.

WackyWarrior on January 31st, 2025 at 21:04 UTC »

When it first came out, it was fun. But when they took it down and put it back up, it had these weird issues where there was lag between button presses and the feedback on the screen. Then the rerelease had like 6 types of premium currency. Things got locked behind pay walls even if you already paid. The characters I unlocked were no longer unlocked. I stopped playing it with my friends when that happened.

twister1000000 on January 31st, 2025 at 19:13 UTC »

And no one was surprised.