On May 28th, MultiVersus made its triumphant return, 11 months after the game was taken offline. Fans had been eagerly awaiting its return, and it seems a lot of players jumped back in at the start; according to SteamDB, MultiVersus hit a high of 114,515 concurrent players over the last 24 hours. That number comes up shy against the game’s all-time peak of 153,433, but it’s still a very respectable return number. For comparison, Warner Bros. Games’ Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League‘s concurrent peak was just 13,459 players; that’s nearly 100,000 players less!ย
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That comparison isn’t entirely fair, as Suicide Squad was a full priced game, while MultiVersus is free-to-play. However, WB Games should be pretty happy with these early results. At the very least, it shows there’s still a lot of interest surrounding the game, with many people eager to check out the newly added characters and other improvements. Over the last few months, WB Games had put a lot of effort into hyping the game’s return, from Happy Meal promotions, to an NHL mash-up that sawย Superman taking the ice against Jack Eichel.ย
Canย MultiVersusย Keep Concurrent Player Numbers High?
While these Steam numbers are pretty strong, there’s a lot we don’t know, including how many people are playing the game on console. It’s possible those numbers are equally strong, but there’s simply no way of knowing for sure. We also don’t know if MultiVersus will be able to retain these types of numbers. It’s easy to see why a lot of Steam users would give a free-to-play game a second chance, but whether or not those players will keep coming back remains to be seen.ย
A lot of fighting games have tried to replicate the success of Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. series, but most have come up short.ย MultiVersusย could have the best chance of building that kind of audience on platforms like Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox. It’s far too early to tell if that will prove the case, but things are off to a good start following the game’s resurrection.ย
The Future of MultiVersus
Support could have a big impact on the long term success of MultiVersus. If WB Games used the time off to get a strong pipeline of content, that could go a long way towards retaining the audience. At the very least, we know Agent Smith from The Matrix series will be arriving in the game at some point this season. Anything beyond that is unknown, but there have been hints about characters such as the Power Puff Girls and Pinky and the Brain.ย
Did you play MultiVersus on its return day? Are you happy to finally have the game back? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter atย @Marcdachamp, on Bluesky atย @Marcdachamp, or on Instagram atย @Dachampgaming!
[H/T: Video Games Chronicle]
