MultiVersus Shutdown Announcement Prompts A Sadly Predictable Tantrum From Gamers
That’s all, folks.
What’s more predictable: another live service game suddenly shutting down, or gamers overreacting to a perceived slight and threatening developers for doing their jobs? We’ve seen both of these all-too-common phenomena in one story this week, as the developers of MultiVersus announced its imminent closure, and a small group of players predictably resorted to harassment to express their frustration.
On January 31, developer Player First Games announced that the end of the upcoming Season 5 would also mark the end of MultiVersus. Running from February 4 to May 30, Season 5 introduces two new characters to MultiVersus — Aquaman and Lola Bunny — meaning that anyone wanting to check out the new roster additions will have only a short time to do so. After MultiVersus’ servers shut down, the game will remain playable offline for solo play or local multiplayer.
MultiVersus is shutting down its servers at the end of Season 5.
Understandably, players aren’t happy about the sudden announcement. While they’re being given more notice than anyone had for the unceremonious closure of Concord, seeing yet another live-service game forced to close its doors is still a blow. That’s especially true for players who forked over $100 for the MultiVersus Founder’s Pack, which was sold during the game’s early access period and included 30 tokens that could be redeemed for new characters. MultiVersus is now closing with 35 characters total, leaving some players who earned fighters through other means with more tokens left over than there are characters left to unlock.
While there may be good reason to be upset about MultiVersus’ closure, developers say some players are taking their outrage too far. Tony Huynh, director of MultiVersus posted on social media on February 2 to discuss the game’s upcoming finale.
“I couldn’t be prouder of the work the PFG team did,” Huynh wrote. “Their endless creativity and passion never ceased to inspire and amaze me. And of course I wanted to thank every player who has ever played or supported MultiVersus.”
Huynh addresses some players’ concerns about how new characters were prioritized, such as instances where less popular characters were introduced ahead of bigger names. He specifically points out Banana Guard, an Adventure Time character, as one that was made “over the weekend as a fun, quick-to-make character.”
Huynh has been personally targeted by some players, who accuse him of unilaterally making any given decision they disagree with, especially when it comes to updates to the roster.
“I don’t have the power some of you think I do,” Huynh wrote. “PFG is a highly collaborative team and ideas are encouraged and can come from anyone and we promote delivering value to players.”
Huynh also calls out players who go beyond just criticism to actually making threats against the development team.
“You’re entitled to what you say and think, but when there are threats to harm it’s crossing the line,” Huynh wrote. “I hope that you can take a step back and realize that this is an extremely sad time for the team. I am in deep mourning for the game. Nobody wanted this outcome and it wasn’t from lack of caring or effort.”
Players lashed out at MultiVersus’ developers after the announcement that the game is ending.
It’s been a rough road for MultiVersus. The Super Smash Bros.-inspired brawler featuring a bizarre mix of characters owned by Warner Bros. was an immediate hit when it launched in early access in July 2022. By early 2023, however, most of the game’s early players had left, mostly due to a lack of updates. At the end of its early access period in June 2023, MultiVersus was taken offline for nearly a full year before its full release in May 2024.
Resentment of the developers has been stewing among some players all the while over the game’s microtransactions, character roster, and even balance tweaks. None of that is unexpected for a game as big as MultiVersus, and it’s worryingly common for those feelings to spill over into harassment of developers.
As much as MultiVersus is a sign of the difficult state of the games industry — particularly for live-service games — it’s also emblematic of a dysfunctional dynamic between players and developers. As upsetting as it might be for devoted players of a game to see it shut down, that pales in comparison to what developers themselves experience, seeing their work essentially disappear and their jobs at risk of being eliminated. There’s never an excuse for making threats, and as the end of MultiVersus shows, developers themselves are the real victims when a game shuts down.
