Warner Bros. has confirmed to IGN that Warner Bros. Games has now officially acquired the developer behind MultiVersus, Player First Games. Co-founders Tony Huynh and Chris White (whom I interviewed back in 2022) will reportedly retain their leadership roles within Player First Games.
MultiVersus is a platform brawler consisting of plenty of Warner Bros.-owned characters such as Batman, Shaggy, The Joker, Jason Voorhees, Banana Guard, Agent Smith, Tom & Jerry, Superman, Bugs Bunny, and plenty more. Just recently, it was announced that Samurai Jack and Beetlejuice would be joining in Season 2.
“Our team is excited to join the Warner Bros. Games family, and we feel that this will be great for MultiVersus overall,” said Huynh in the statement release to IGN. “We are working to make the MultiVersus game experience the best it can be and having our development team integrated with the publisher is optimum for the players.”
“We have worked with Player First Games over several years to create and launch MultiVersus, and we are very pleased to welcome this talented team to Warner Bros. Games.” — Warner Bros. Games president
“We have worked with Player First Games over several years to create and launch MultiVersus, and we are very pleased to welcome this talented team to Warner Bros. Games,” said David Haddad, Warner Bros. Games president. “The bright and creative team at Player First Games adds to our extensive development capabilities.”
This does seem to suggest that MultiVersus is performing well enough for Warner Bros. Games to want to acquire Player First Games. Needless to say, this can be seen as good news for the game’s future.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Riot Games has canceled their own platform brawler, codenamed Pool Party, due to the perceived “failure” of MultiVersus, which may have had something to do with the beta being pulled offline for about a year.
Supposedly, Riot Games’ platform brawler would’ve been developed beside 2XKO and likely would’ve also used characters from League of Legends. Ultimately though, development on the rumored game was supposedly being worked on by around 70-80 developers, but it ended up getting shut down before being announced.
The resurgence of platform brawlers in recent years can very likely be accrued to the massive success of Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which has now reportedly achieved over 34.22 million sales worldwide.
However, the acquisition of Player First Games by Warner Bros. Games does run the risk that members of their team could be laid off in the future. Unfortunately, it was reported that NetherRealm Studios had to lay off their entire mobile development team, affecting over 50 people.
Warner Bros. Discovery recently reported that they had suffered a $200 million loss due to the failure that was Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, a game developed by another one of Warner Bros. subsidiary companies, Rocksteady Studios.
Luckily for Warner Bros., NetherRealm Studios’ Mortal Kombat 1 turned out to be fairly successful as it was able to sell three million units in just a few months time. Since then, there have been no reports about Mortal Kombat 1’s sales figures after November 2023, but it should be noted that it had a disappointingly low turnout at Evo 2024.
Ultimately, this does seem like Player First Games has a promising future, but there are certainly risks involved with this recent acquisition. We’ll just have to see how things play out from here.