Multiversus is a battle royale style video game that utilized characters from multiple Intellectual properties from the Warner Bros. franchise. The game included characters such as Bugs Bunny from “Looney Toons,” Shaggy from “Scooby-Doo” and Garnet from the show “Steven Universe.” An open beta launched in July 2022 and garnered a large following for what fans believed to be the next “Smash Bros.”
When the open beta closed in June 2023 and the game launched in May 2024, the free-to-play game was made available to players around the world. While the beta was open, 17 playable characters were available for participants to try out and get a feeling for the game, however when the full game was released they were met with 4 characters to use that were rotated weekly for the F2P audience.
Playing these characters would rack up experience for officially unlocking them for permanent usage, but for those who wanted to be able to play as other cast members at a quicker pace, they had the option of purchasing the in-game currency known as “Gleamium.”
Unfortunately, for consumers who downloaded the game in order to enjoy a F2P experience, this was not in their favor.
“Players tend to resent these less when they have an avenue to get all the content if they are skilled enough and spend enough time playing.” – Ryan Thames, University of North Georgia Game Studies Professor
As Thames clarified, the F2P model is a “challenging” business model that relies upon capturing a fan base for a high risk, high reward profit. Multiversus failed to retain such a fanbase and announced on Jan. 31, 2025, that after its fifth and final season, that it will be shutting down all its online servers and purchasing in-game currency will not be possible after the game shuts down.
UNG esports member Winston Swarts and former member Alejandro Canela commented on the difficulty of obtaining characters and Swarts provided that “if they’re new, forget about it” in relation to characters unavailable to f2p players due to paywalls and as Canela put it, an “annoying” process altogether.
At this point in time, Warner Bros. has claimed that the shutdown is due to not retaining a large enough audience size to warrant maintaining the online servers. Jeff Marker, another UNG Game studies professor, said that if the game itself wasn’t free, the sales numbers for the entire production would have been “abysmal.” Marker continued on by commenting that their strategy to utilize microtransactions had the opposite effect on players causing them to be driven away in a similar fashion to titles by other companies.
Offline servers and previously purchased Gleamium will still be available for players to utilize. Following May 30, 2025, all other services and updates for the video game will cease permanently.
