A week after suddenly springing back to life—and more than eight months after the open beta was taken offline—Player First Games has announced that Smashlike fighting game Multiversus will go into full release on May 28.
Multiversus made quite a splash when it launched into open beta in July 2022, attracting millions of players and running through two full seasons before it was unexpectedly ended a year later. I thought there was a good chance it was gone for good—Warner's been rolling that way lately—but the resumption of activity on Multiversus' social media accounts last week pretty clearly indicated otherwise.
Much has changed during its time away. Multiversus has moved to Unreal Engine 5 and has been "rebuilt from the ground up to support our new netcode," which director Tony Huynhy said will provide more consistent and accurate gameplay regardless of platform. Each character in the game will have "new attacks and combat mechanics," and a new PvE mode with "unique rewards" has been added.
Huynh also teased the addition of "some really exciting brand new personalities" to the Multiversus lineup, although nothing specific on who's coming has been revealed just yet.
It'll be very interesting to see how Multiversus fares after such a long time away. It racked up nearly 94,000 positive user reviews on Steam—not bad for a beta—and the tweet announcing its return currently carries 14,000 likes and 5,000 retweets, which admittedly isn't the most precise metric ever but does point toward genuine excitement for the comeback.
That has to be welcome news for publisher Warner Bros, which following the flop of Suicide Squad has said it wants to go harder on free-to-play and live service games: Multiversus fits squarely within those brackets, and I have to think that it figures prominently in the publisher's plans for the next few years, especially given the game's positive reception in beta.
More details on what will be available in the launch version of Multiversus will be revealed "in the coming weeks." For now, you can head over to multiversus.com to check out the FAQ (although it doesn't appear to have been updated yet—there's no mention of the PvE mode, for instance) and the full roster of announced characters.
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Andy Chalk
Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.
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