“The honeymoon is over”. MultiVersus is seeing a major player outflow

Over the last 24 hours, the peak concurrent player count in MultiVersus reached 5,755 players. It might seem decent, but it marks a significant outflow of players.

One can recall that back in July, during beta testing, the record on Steam stood at 153.4 thousand concurrent users, which is almost 28 times higher. While the exact figures for console versions are unknown, the trend seems to indicate waning interest.

How did this situation come about? Judging by fan discussions, there are many reasons. According to some, this is completely normal. A comment on the ResetEra forum reads:

“People overestimate the importance of the first few weeks’ results for a free-to-play game. The honeymoon is over.”

It is often argued that the game is too geared towards fans of hardcore fighting games, which presents a twofold problem: less experienced players quickly get frustrated, while seasoned ones complain about lag or attacks having too little range.

A player nicknamed Glio believes:

“That is the problem with all platform fighters. They try to appeal to core gamers, and as a result, fail to offer the casual, chaotic fun of the Super Smash Bros. series.”

Another issue is that it takes too long to get into the action, particularly due to character selection and character bans.

For comparison, one can look at Brawlhalla, a much older Smash clone from Ubisoft, which drew 14,500 concurrent players on Steam over the past 24 hours.