GameReviewPad Video Game Hall of Shame 2024
MultiVersus
Developer: Player First Games
Publisher: Warner Bros. Games
Disclosure: I am a paying customer of a Founder’s Pack
My anger towards MultiVersus gets my blood boiling, so I’m going to keep this one as a quick as I can. This is free-to-play platform fighter, similar to the Super Smash Bros franchise, except this uses Warner Bros. characters and characters from other IPs. I also want to fully disclose that when the game came out in 2022 I purchased a “Founder’s Pack” to show my support and get extra character unlock tickets because I liked the vision and framework of the game. In an unprecedented move, Player First Games pulled MultiVersus offline after it was arguably in “open beta” according to the developers. I won’t get into that, The game was struggling and the developers felt it needed cleanup for a re-release.
So I paid for a game and could no longer play it online in mid-2023. This was an issue, but only a minor issue compared to what the game would become when it returned available to play fully launched in April 2024.
When MultiVersus returned to operations it was a completely new experience than the one that was presented and played that got most gamers interested. Free-to-play characters could be acquired using in-game gold in the first version, but upon re-launch that gold system was scrapped and anyone who had saved up gold lost their gold to a new converted currency that wasn’t fair. The MultiVersus that released in April 2024 was NOT the MultiVersus that got me interested enough to buy a Founder’s Pack. Furthermore, the game was completely designed with a mobile microtransaction user interface with many different types of disgusting currencies. The layout was different, the way unlocks happened were different, and even the gameplay itself was a lot slower. The game now featured many things that turn off the modern gamer.
What was there for me? Nothing. The game I enjoyed was no longer there. To add insult to everything I couldn’t get a refund from Steam because I played too much of it from original release Even stranger, Founder’s Packs could no longer be purchased. Players First Games, an ironic name, pulled the rug out from all of us that bought Founder’s Packs and now the game is completely different than the one we based our purchase on.
If MultiVersus was what it is now, I never would have bought a Founder’s Pack.
This MultiVersus experience highlights a loophole in the Steam refund system. Any developer can charge money for their game, pull their game offline, and completely remake it to be something else.
This makes MultiVersus, developed by Player First Games, my first ever Video Game Hall of Shame inductee.
Steam Store: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1818750/MultiVersus/
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