Player First Games’ platform brawler MultiVersus has not been hitting it off with audiences since its official launch earlier this year.
According to Warner Bros Discovery’s recent investor call (and spotted by IGN), CEO David Zaslav and CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels admitted the game underperformed alongside September’s Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions. Both titles added another $100 million loss to WBD’s game division, which already saw a $200 million loss from February’s Suicide Squad.
“We recognize [the games business] is substantially underperforming its potential right now,” admitted Zaslav. Wiedenfels added that the overall $300 million writedown from WB’s games was a “key factor in this year’s studio profit decline.”
Looking at its financials for the third quarter (which wrapped on September 30, 2024), WBD’s games division lost 31 percent in revenue compared to last year’s quarter, which had Mortal Kombat 1 as a primary driver.
MultiVersus’ relaunch came after its open beta (which had been running since summer 2022) was shut down in mid-2023. During the beta and following the relaunch, the game touted solid player numbers, which led to WB acquiring Player First over the summer.
But, as IGN notes, its current 24-hour concurrent count is only 1,741 players on Steam, substantially below its all-time peak of 153,433 players. Earlier this week, Player First announced a new pair of characters to join the game’s roster with its upcoming fourth season.
Where does WB Games go from here?
During the call, WBD reportedly said it would put more weight behind four properties for its games business: Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, and DC Comics. Of those, Game of Thrones’ future in games is the most unclear at time of writing.
However, the latter may not be surprising. DC games come out on a regular basis; Batman: Arkham Shadow recently launched for the Meta Quest 3, and Monolith is currently at work on a Wonder Woman game.
Meanwhile, NetherRealm is developing Mortal Kombat 1’s second run of DLC characters, with Ghostface (from the Scream films) arriving sometime in November. The series will return to movies again with a sequel to the 2021 reboot film in October 2025.
Last year, Avalanche Software released Hogwarts Legacy, which became a big commercial hit for WB Games. A sequel was confirmed to be in development in a recent Variety story, and a “Director’s Cut” of the first game is said to be in the works, with Rocksteady reportedly pitching in as co-developer.