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Player First Games has announced that Multiversus, its fighting game with a roster of characters from the Warners Bros. catalog, is returning on May 28. Its open beta went offline in June 2023, with scant updates on the title since. According to director Tony Huynh, the game was rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5, with a new PvE mode and each character getting new moves.
Multiversus first launched in open beta in July 2022, with Player First releasing a steady stream of content updates and characters over the year. The game was taken offline and removed from digital storefronts in April 2023, though local offline play remained available. Huynh said at the time that the dev team would use the feedback from the open beta period to rework the game ahead of its full launch in early 2024. At the time the beta went offline, both Player First and Warner Bros. assured users their progress and currency would transfer to the full launch.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s J.B. Perrette, head of streaming and gaming, spoke recently at a Morgan Stanley event about the company’s games plan. He explained that, though Hogwarts Legacy was a hit, the studio was also disappointed at the performance of other games, such as Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. He reiterated the studio’s plans to invest in “a live service where people can live and work and build and play in that world on an ongoing basis” instead of “a one-and-done console game.”
Perrette added that the company also plans to invest in free-to-play mobile titles as well. He said, “Within the studio segment, we’re doubling down on games as an area where we think there is a lot more growth opportunity that we can tap into with the IP that we have and some of the capabilities on the studio side, where we’re uniquely positioned as both a publisher and a developer of games.” Multiversus would fit the company’s new paradigm, as it’s a free-to-play live-service title.
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