The beat-em-up MMO Marvel’s Avengers is on the verge of extinction. The developers will soon end support and even cease digital sales. Thus, the biggest gaming flop of 2020 will disappear from the market. We will show you how it came to this, what is happening now, and whether you can still play the game in the future on MeinMMO.
Marvel’s Avengers was a committed MMO project by Final Fantasy publisher Square Enix, aiming to combine looting & leveling with the most powerful heroes in the world. However, even the testing phases at the time showed: The recipe did not go down well.
Full-price games with a service approach usually have it hard, because there is often criticism that such games should contain a Battle Pass or purchasable cosmetics for real money. In addition, the gameplay loop is often not motivating enough to keep players engaged for long.
In retrospect, it can be said: The criticism was justified. There were also many bugs and issues in the game after the full release, which had already been delayed by 4 months. New content also took too long to arrive.
Now the responsible parties are pulling the emergency brake: Marvel’s Avengers will receive its last update in March 2023 and will be supported until the end of September 2023. Afterwards, the game will be restructured so that it no longer offers a live service and will end digital availability.
The latest Marvel game does not rely on service – watch a trailer for Midnight Sons here:
Marvel’s Avengers: A flop even at release
If you take a look at the Steam player numbers, it quickly becomes clear: The beat-em-up game had significant problems from the start in building the necessary player base for a service game.
The peak number of simultaneous players was in the release month of September 2020 – that was just over 28,000 players. Even that was too few for the high standards – currently, that would not even place it in the top 30 most played games on Steam (via steamcharts.com / Status: 31.01.23).
It quickly dropped to a few thousand players, and recently it was only hundreds.
Although Marvel’s Avengers also came to consoles from PlayStation and Xbox and is even part of the subscription services Xbox Game Pass and PS Plus Extra, the Steam numbers are a good indicator and show the MMO’s problems in achieving decent player numbers.
Continuing to play is possible, purchase only as a disc
What happens now? In a blog, the developers reached out to the community (via avengers.crystald.com). Here, the last update was announced, which will bring the final changes to the game:
- Update 2.8
- Last balance adjustments
- Unlocks all cosmetics
Update 2.8 will be released on March 31 and will unlock all cosmetics from the real-money shop if you have purchased the game. Even if you buy the game later, the cosmetics are free.
On September 30, it’s finally over: The support will cease, digital purchases of Marvel’s Avengers will no longer be possible, and newly discovered bugs will not be fixed.
Can you still play Marvel’s Avengers then? The title will be restructured so that you can continue to play solo and in multiplayer. You can still install your digitally purchased version, but this version can no longer be purchased anew.
Available disc versions can still be purchased and will work. The live events of Marvel’s Avengers will continue to rotate every 2 weeks, but are no longer truly “live”.
If you still have real-money currency in the game, you will receive the other currencies in exchange. Here is the exchange overview:
One last lousy piece of news for players on Xbox and PC that the developers also have to share. A major criticism will also not be addressed after the closure: Spider-Man remains PlayStation-exclusive.
Personal opinion of the author: I was quite hyped at release and had my 50 hours of fun in the game. Unfortunately, Marvel’s Avengers did not work as a long-term service game – after the (really good) campaign and 2 leveled heroes, it was over.
The missions simply were not varied enough; the gameplay loop ultimately only relied on the different heroes, who all played differently. But even with a supercharged Hulk, it’s no fun to keep repeating the same patterns.
I intended to give it another go a few times, at least to try the “new” raid and play Black Panther. But it never managed to generate the same attraction that a game like Destiny did, to which I have returned many times.
If you don’t know the game yet but are into looting & leveling and/or Marvel superheroes, then definitely check out Marvel’s Avengers – grab it on sale or play it through PS Plus Extra or Xbox Game Pass. However, it never became a big hit.
Perhaps it’s once again colleague Jürgen’s fault: I have a superpower: I can kill games, and Marvel’s Avengers is my new victim
