MultiVersus has officially closed its open beta, essentially shutting down all aspects of the game and removing the ability for any new players to access it. And, while the title won’t have all of its features available for nearly a year, one last round of leaks points to what fans might be able to expect when MV does return in 2024.
Warner Bros. Games and developers at Player First Games shared their plans to close its beta in March, shocking fans who expected the beta to transition into a full release akin to most early access pipelines.
This decision marked the culmination of a slow decline for the once booming free-to-play fighter, which lost a majority of its player base on PC even before that announcement. It also didn’t help PFG confirmed refunds would not be able to request a refund for in-game purchases despite the game going away for an undisclosed amount of time.
The developers are going to try to turn things around next year with major reworks to “content cadence” for updates and characters—even if there is no timeline for a relaunch. In the meantime, players who already downloaded MultiVersus can continue playing the offline modes with all content unlocked.
So, for many, this means MultiVersus is a “dead game” until it actually makes a return. That hasn’t stopped the game’s datamining community from compiling one last mega update on what content might be in the works or was at one point could have been featured.
Over the last several months, various dataminers combined their backend knowledge to share a mega-list of unreleased or scrapped content, including the following characters: Joker, Marceline, Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, Mordecai from Regular Show, at least one Harry Potter character, and an unknown Cartoon Network rep.
Related: Does MultiVersus have local multiplayer?
Joker leaked ages ago and was reportedly supposed to be unveiled at the 2022 Game Awards before plans changed internally. Likewise, strings of data for the PPGs and Jack were found fairly recently, but the other characters are a bit more out there.
According to an older stream from leaker PapaGenos, Beetlejuice was replaced by Marvin the Martian on the schedule due to Black Adam being pushed up by WB—likely to coincide with the movie of the same name. There are also characters like Scooby-Doo that have voice lines but are still being designed as fighters too.
We also got a bit of insight into some characters that were leaked early on but have not been seen since, like Gandalf, Godzilla, Eleven from Stranger Things, and Ted Lasso—along with some surprising mentions like Master Chief and Spongebob.
Every MultiVersus character leak
- Ted Lasso is reportedly in a good place to be added, either as a fighter or Announcer Pack, since Ted’s actor Jason Sudeikis reached out to PFG and was on board.
- Walter White is in heavy limbo because of how much he was requested by the community, but there isn’t much info outside of some reported hesitation based on drug-related content.
- Godzilla, Gandalf, and several other characters might not be included due to licensing issues or decision-making for their respective IP that used to be held more closely under the WB umbrella. This is likely going to be a big reason several names don’t get in.
- NetherRealm Studios reportedly wanted control over how Mortal Kombat representatives would have played and portrayed in MV, PFG didn’t want to give up full creative control at the time.
- Master Chief and other popular characters that did not make it into Super Smash Bros. Ultimate have reportedly been brought up multiple times and Eleven was a pitch to Netflix.
- Some files for characters like the ones mentioned as Ninja and Brute were original characters from PFG’s Battle Bound project in the works before MV and have been scrapped but remain as potential placeholders for future characters. These also may have been pitched to other companies for the Naruto and Wreck-It Ralph leaks.
- Sony may have reached out to WB regarding Spider-Man’s inclusion at one point and Paramount may have done the same for Spongebob. These reports aren’t concrete.
- Ben 10 has previously been mentioned and leaked, but the team wants to do the character justice.
All of this information, and more from PapaGenos and other leakers over the last few months has not been confirmed and likely won’t be talked about at all until we start hearing about MultiVersus’ planned 2024 relaunch.
It also looks like development for MV might move to Unreal Engine 5, but that is just based on a job listing that partially mentions some close details.
Hopefully the team at PFG can take their time to hone in on what everyone loved about MultiVersus and bring an enhanced product to the masses when they are ready.
