Following the re-release of the Warner Bros. Games series MultiVersus, the game has quickly become trending again since its original beta launch in 2022. However, this resurgence of popularity has led to some recent controversy, including how they monetize, balance the game, and more.
The latest balance patch comes prefaced with an official notice for the player base before getting into the full list of changes.
“Before we dive into various fixes and improvements coming in this patch, we wanted to mention that Iron Giant has been taken back to the shop for maintenance and is not available to play with right now. We should have a status update by next week.”
This, to many, came as a complete and utter surprise when it happened.
What’s more, is that the removal of the character Iron Giant was not officially talked about until the patch notes were released on June 6. The actual removal of the character would have taken place around June 3. This means that the character was, without a doubt, removed from the game without any prior warnings and only properly addressed by the developers about three entire days later.
To some, this may seem like an overexaggeration, but to others it might have been taken a lot more seriously. The underlying reasoning that led to Iron Giant’s removal would stem from the fact that the character was put into the re-release of the game a bit… overpowered, to put it lightly.
From there, the player base would quickly discover that the character would be able to do multiple game-changing “infinites” to other players that would easily provide an unfair advantage to any Iron Giants using them. This particular infinite, however, might just have been the “straw that broke the camel’s back”, as this was posted only a day before the developers unceremoniously pulled him from the game.
Furthermore, the future for MultiVersus as a whole seems very questionable, especially as of recent. On one side, you have those that genuinely enjoy the gameplay and want to see the game prosper. On the other, you have those that can’t stand the game’s negative monetization practices, its allegedly “slow-paced” gameplay (comparatively to the beta), and so on.
Regardless of what is thought of the game from a subjective lens, the unexpected, yet temporary removal of Iron Giant is still perhaps one of the strangest decisions made within the entirety of the game’s lifespan.
Rather than releasing the balance patch to fix the character then like a majority of other fighting games would do, the developers instead removed him, talked about the removal three days later during the first balance patch, and plan to give just an update within the following week.
For the casual Iron Giant fan that was playing, grinding and enjoying themselves within the re-release of the game, they clearly do not have a choice in the matter. For them, they will simply have to wait until Player First Games decides that Iron Giant is well and ready to be reintroduced into the public.
