The addition of Rick increased the player count in Warner Bros.’ platform fighter MultiVersus, but it still hasn’t been enough to eliminate growing fears that the game is dying similarly to that other Nickelodeon platform fighter the FGC already forgot about.
MultiVersus was a huge hit when it first dropped. Many Super Smash Bros. pros started streaming the game and gushed about the game’s steady online play and fun cast of fighters. With a colorful roster full of superheroes, villains and iconic cartoon characters from every decade, MultiVersus was taking the FGC world by storm. It helped that the developer supported the game with a massive prize pool at Evo 2022.
MultiVersus boasted 10 million players in the weeks following its release earlier this summer. It had a peak 153,000 players on Steam Charts around that time.
But while MultiVersus initially KO’d other fighting games in the viewership category, including Brawlhalla and Tekken 7, the game started to decline soon after. Just a few months later, MultiVersus had a rapid drop in players. In August, the game had a peak of 28,000 or so players. By September, MultiVersus had lost more than 75% of its player count, and it reached just 1,300 players a day before Rick dropped.
Rick brought MultiVersus back up to about 6,000 players. This is still a far fall from the player count just a few months ago, however.
Why is MultiVersus dying?Â
While developers keep dropping new content and expanding its roster with fun characters, the game is actually full of issues that are often overlooked.
MultiVersus is currently in beta. It’s still being updated and balanced quite often, with players often complaining about various characters being too powerful or too weak. Fighter hitboxes are a consistent source of frustration.
Some on social media are also calling the game boring due to a lack of game modes. Most people don’t play Free For All. Fans of MultiVersus, however, have argued that most of the complaints are coming from non-competitive gamers who just like the characters in the game. If you’re not used to playing Super Smash Bros. daily, it can feel a bit repetitive to just fight other people online all day. Meanwhile, there’s no campaign mode or arcade mode.
However, competitive players are also complaining since there’s no ranked mode. Without ranked mode, there isn’t as much of an incentive to keep fighting online.
