Following last week’s announcement thatMultiVersus, the Warner Bros. fighting game, isshutting down this May, some players who purchased the game’s $100 Founder’s Pack are pretty upset.
When the game first launched in 2022, it came with a Founder’s Pack, allowing players to support theSuper Smash Bros.clone while earning various rewards. Most notably, it included 30 Character Tokens, letting players unlock new additions to the game’s roster. It also came with 2500 Gleamium, the game’s premium currency.
MultiVersus Fans Call Out “Ugly Monetization” After Discovering Ability To Purchase Extra Lives
“Welcome to the future of gaming”
However, most players haven’t been able to use all their rewards, meaning they paid for goods they will never have the chance to use. Some fans have taken to the game’ssubredditto complain.
“They sold Founders from July 2022 to February 2023,” said one fan. “The roster was up to 23 characters and Marvin the most recent character at the time came out November of 2022.
Players were able to buy the entire roster before even buying Founders and WB still sold Founders to these players promising them 30 usable character tokens.”
Others pushed back, saying that there were over 30 purchasable characters in the game, meaning there was an opportunity for everyone to spend their Character Tokens. However, most players were using other methods to purchase characters or just saving tokens for more desirable ones.
This Isn’t The First Time Players Expressed Concerns About MultiVersus
Following a successful open beta launch, developer Player First Games tookMultiVersusoffline in early 2023, much to the dismay of fans. The game peaked at over 20 million users in September 2022, but a lack of content updates led to the team working on a soft reboot ahead of the game’s official release.
Unfortunately, the game’s reboot in 2024 never took off like the game’s open beta. One key reason was itsugly monetization practices.
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Fans did the math to realize that it would take nearly 40 hours of PVP gameplay to unlock a new character. The Joker would take even more, clocking in at just under 80 hours of gameplay to unlock.
All this occurred after the Founder’s Pack was taken offline in early 2023, meaning players no longer had the option to spend $100 and unlock 30 characters. The only way to unlock characters at this point was to spend hundreds of hours playing the game.
