In June, MultiVersus is going offline until 2024. Player First Games (an increasingly ironic name) has decided that it's time to end the beta and use the rest of the year to beef up its content offering so it can have a big, attention-grabbing relaunch next year. In the meantime, WB Games will not be providing refunds for Founder's Packs or Gleamium bundles. If you invested in this game and would like to continue playing it, tough luck, see you next year. Maybe.
Despite the exceptionally low player count and almost total lack of new content this year, the news that the beta was ending and the game was going offline came as a shock to everyone, since that's not how any beta has ever worked in the history of games.
Early, pre-launch betas are a thing, obviously. Diablo 4 was online for two consecutive weekends this month, and now it's going offline until the full release in June. But in these situations the developers are always clear that there is going to be a gap between the beta and the full, permanent release. They don't launch the game, run multiple seasons, collect lots of money, then pull it down an entire year later and pretend that it was all one big beta test. That's what Player First Game did, and it had the gall to act like there isn't anything weird about that.
Something as big as a six month long delisting shouldn't be a surprise to players. If the studio was going to charge money for characters, seasons, and cosmetics, it should have been upfront that its customers would eventually lose access for a long period of time. When a game is in a prolonged beta or early access period like this, the understanding is that it will eventually dovetail seamlessly into a full release. If Player First Game wanted to break from that tradition, it needed to be upfront about that from the very start.
It seems obvious it couldn't do that because going offline for half a year was never the plan. For whatever reason the studio has been unable to deliver a constant flow of new content, and as a result the player count has diminished and the Steam review score has tanked. Now, Player First Games wants to hit the pause button, build up a bunch of content and features, and get a second chance at launching next year. I'm of the opinion that you don't get to do that.
To fully put this in perspective, the last major update to the game was Marvin the Martian, on November 21. The gap between the beta’s launch and Marvin’s arrival is a few days shorter than the gap between Marvin’s arrival and now. The game feels a🅠s🎐 if it has been abandoned.
No one knows why the studio was unable to keep up with a reasonable content schedule, but if it needs to stop the clock, regroup, and have a fresh start next year, it's unfortunate but understandable. What I find unacceptable is taking the game offline and making it inaccessible to the people that paid for long-term support. There is no reason the game can't stay online while Player First Games gets its shit together, but it wants to have the fanfare of a big launch. It wants a big influx of players all at once. It wants to manipulate review scores. I find that unacceptable.
Halo Infinite modeled exactly how to handle a situation like this is. The game floundered for over a year while 343 Industries struggled to develop a sustainable live-service content pipeline, but it was transparent with the community the entire time, and it eventually started making good on its promises. The player base dwindled, but Halo Infinite wasn't shut down while the dev team regrouped. It was playable even when there wasn't any new content to play, and 343 put its head down and did what it needed to do to earn the trust of its players back. Things are in the process of turning around for Halo Infinite right now, but the studio didn't make a play for some kind of big attention-grabbing relaunch. It just followed through and did what it needed to do.
I hope MultiVersus comes back better than ever next year, that Player First Games finds a way to be consistent with content releases, and that the player base explodes. But the way it's handling this "beta" is criminal. Even if it turns out for the best in the long run, this is a new low for live-service games, and the trust players have in them.