Warner Bros. confirm MultiVersus is “underperforming”

The relaunch of MultiVersus earlier this year has not gone the way Warner Bros. were likely hoping, with general sentiment surrounding the game being that it is inferior to the pre-release beta version from prior years. Unfortunately, it seems as though the game has not yet managed to turn things around, with WB confirming that its gaming division is “substantially underperforming.”

As part of Warner Bros. latest financial earnings call, company President and CEO David Zaslav stated that its gaming division is not doing too well at the moment, saying (as transcribed by IGN):

“we recognise [the games business] is substantially underperforming its potential right now,” with CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels adding that “We took another $100 million plus impairment due to the underperforming releases, primarily MultiVersus this quarter, bringing total writedown year-to-date to over $300 million in our games business, a key factor in this year's studio profit decline.”

Interestingly, WB acquired the developers behind MultiVersus – Player First Games – just a few months ago back in July, with the dev team stating at the time “we feel that this will be great for MultiVersus overall. We are working to make the MultiVersus game experience the best it can be and having our development team integrated with the publisher is optimum for the players.” 

No figure was provided for just how much WB paid to acquire Player First Games, and so it is unknown how much of the $300 million can be attributed to it.

Still, the downward trajectory that MultiVersus has had since its beta launch till now is an unfortunate one to see. Hopefully WB gives the team the time and resources needed to make the game as good as possible (as unlikely as that may be).

KitGuru says: What do you think of the current state of MultiVersus? Do you think WB will pull the plug prematurely? Was the acquisition of Player First Games a good or bad thing in your mind? Let us know down below.

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