🍪 MultiVersus, Smash 6, and the cost of promising everyone

Hello there, roster hoarders, rematch addicts, and last-stock survivors…

Batman and Bugs Bunny got people through the door. Mario, Sonic, and Cloud helped turn another fighting game into a gaming landmark. Then came the expensive question: what do you owe everyone after you have invited everyone in?

MultiVersus lost its online service on May 30, 2025. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate became such an enormous collection of characters and play styles that following it invites a different anxiety: who gets left behind? One story concerns a failed service; the other concerns the burden of a successful game. Together, they expose how easily the excitement of a crossover can outrun the plan for sustaining it.

The player-facing test is wonderfully unglamorous. Can I find my character, enjoy a match, bring a friend, and still want another round when the next reveal trailer is months away?

MultiVersus had already won the introduction

Warner Bros. Games reported that MultiVersus had passed 20 million players by August 2022, following the open beta’s July 26 opening. Its emphasis on two-versus-two fights gave familiar characters a cooperative purpose: bring somebody along and work together, rather than simply admire the selection screen.

The service then took a break that few multiplayer habits could comfortably survive. The March 2023 developer update set the beta’s closure for June 25. The full launch followed on May 28, 2024, as the developer’s returning-player announcement confirmed. That was about eleven months without the live service, long enough for friend groups to build their evenings around something else.

The returning-player economy also changed. Gold disappeared, with commemorative cosmetics tied to beta Gold earnings offered in its place. Fighter currency, Perk currency, and Prestige currency had separate purposes. Existing Gleamium, character tokens, and Battle Pass tokens were retained under the announced rules. Describing that as every purchase being erased would conceal the actual complaint: previously accumulated Gold no longer served its former purpose.

🦊 Kiki: I saved Gold to unlock a fighter. You retired the Gold and brought me commemorative cosmetics. Adorable. My purchasing power died and you sent flowers. Can the flowers do a down-air?

Yes, the other tokens survived. Yes, a messy economy may need rebuilding. Players already spent evenings accumulating this stuff. Make the return worth those evenings. Otherwise your loyalty reward is a framed photograph of the thing my time used to buy. Three new currency names later, I’m standing in front of the roster feeling like I wandered into a foreign-exchange kiosk run by the Joker. Excellent crossover. Terrible welcome home.

🍪 Chip pushes the commemorative badge against the locked character drawer; the drawer stays shut, and the badge falls flat.

The first patch exposes the everyday problem

The relaunch’s 1.01 patch notes provide a cleaner receipt than any sweeping claim that players simply rejected a Smash rival. The update enabled trying unowned fighters in Training Mode and added Battle Pass XP after each player-versus-player match. It also addressed performance problems and listed further requested features still to come.

Those changes deserve credit. They also show how basic the friction could be. A game selling the appeal of a cast needs to make discovering that cast welcoming. A game asking for repeat matches should make the matches themselves feel rewarding. The patch establishes those specific problems and responses; it cannot tell us precisely how much each one contributed to the eventual shutdown.

The endpoint needs equal care. WB Games’ shutdown FAQ preserved an offline route: players who installed the relevant version and logged in during Season 5 could create a local save for their earned and purchased content. Local play and training remained, with all fighters playable. That preserved a portion of the game, while online matchmaking and the continuing seasonal service ended.

🦊 Kiki: You hired Batman to get me through the door and somehow gave him a job in onboarding. I came to throw a sandwich at somebody. Why am I studying the employee handbook?

Let me test the fighters. Let the matches advance the pass. These are extremely modest demands for a fighting game that would like me to keep fighting. The patch delivered both improvements; credit where it belongs. Selling characters and cosmetics can pay for worthwhile work, too. But a famous cast makes basic friction more embarrassing. You have Bugs Bunny, a creature whose entire professional skill set involves walking through locked doors, and your player is still outside reading the terms of admission. Somebody give the rabbit the product meeting.

🍪 Chip unrolls an enormous onboarding form until it covers both controllers.

Ultimate made the opposite promise difficult to repeat

Nintendo’s crossover succeeded on a scale that makes the comparison uncomfortable for both easy narratives. Nintendo reports 38.14 million lifetime units of Ultimate as of June 30, 2026. The crossover concept clearly can support a substantial paid game.

⭐ Byte: MultiVersus’s 20 million figure measures the publisher’s reported cumulative players in its early free-to-play period. Ultimate’s 38.14 million measures worldwide lifetime software sales, including downloads and bundles. Neither figure measures today’s active audience. Dividing one by the other would produce an impressive-looking answer to a question these numbers cannot settle.

In his October 2023 account of Ultimate’s development, Masahiro Sakurai explained how continuity with the previous Bandai Namco team helped make bringing every returning fighter feasible. He also described the enormous work and cost involved. Even with that continuity, the game required extensive adjustments; retaining a character never meant the team could simply stop working on it.

Ultimate also made tradeoffs within its abundance. Sakurai explained that its scale constrained what the team could build for solo play, helping shape the Spirits system and World of Light. The product celebrated inclusion through deliberate choices about where development effort could go.

His closing reflection expressed doubt about repeating expansion on that scale, while leaving the possibility of another game open. That is a development warning from 2023, not a cancellation announcement for a future Smash. GameSpot’s September 9, 2026 commentary on Smash’s continued absence from Switch 2 announcements shows why the question still feels immediate. Speculation about licensing or a successor remains speculation.

🦊 Kiki: I am absolutely part of the problem. Reveal one impossible guest and I’ll crawl out of my principles like a raccoon hearing a bin lid. Keep everyone! Add everyone! Rebuild everything! Also, why is development taking so long? A flawless brief, delivered by a woman currently losing to a pink balloon.

So yes, a smaller roster can make sense. Now comes Nintendo’s horrifying ordeal: explaining why I should buy it. Better play with friends? A solo mode I want to revisit? Show me. A missing favorite accompanied by a gratitude lecture is a miserable sales pitch. My wallet has no parental controls requiring me to reward effort. Give the tradeoff a payoff. The empty character slot does not become premium content because somebody bows beside it.

🍪 Chip crosses out one demand on a towering wish list and immediately catches three more sheets falling from it.

A franchise also needs a future beyond one person

The succession question predates Ultimate. In Nintendo’s Iwata Asks discussion of Brawl’s beginnings, Satoru Iwata and Sakurai recalled the 2005 E3 announcement arriving before Sakurai had agreed to lead the project. Iwata described an online-enabled version of Melee as the fallback if Sakurai declined. Sakurai eventually accepted, explaining the happiness he believed the project could bring players.

That account contains both institutional pressure and a creator’s own decision. Reducing it to Nintendo kidnapping a reluctant genius would flatten the people involved. Treating it as proof that one person can indefinitely carry a franchise would be just as convenient.

The practical lesson is to retain knowledge, develop leadership, and give a future team a brief it can accomplish. A crossover needs people who understand why the characters feel right together, alongside the production capacity to keep the whole game coherent. A publisher’s access to famous faces supplies only part of that job.

🦊 Kiki: “Only this genius can save us” sounds considerably less romantic when you imagine it coming from a company with a human-resources department. Wonderful tribute. Who approved the succession plan, a wishing well?

Sakurai’s experience deserves respect. A publisher should turn that respect into backup, retained knowledge, and people with actual authority. You cannot duplicate him into a folder called SAKURAI_FINAL_FINAL_USE_THIS_ONE. You can give a team time to learn and permission to make a game with a finish line. Players get a future; the director gets to stop being treated like an emergency generator. Please imagine my sympathy for the boardroom discovering that “hire another miracle” comes back with zero applicants. Perhaps try funding the ordinary humans already doing the work.

🍪 Chip places a tiny recruitment sign on an empty director’s chair, then adds a second chair beside it.

Give the next match a reason to exist

MultiVersus’s collapse cannot be reduced to a single economy decision, and Ultimate’s scale cannot prove that a successor will fail. The useful connection is the obligation created by the invitation. A service needs a convincing everyday experience and a clear account of what survives its end. A sequel needs a reason to choose it that reaches beyond a bigger headcount.

For players, three questions cut through the presentation. How easy is it to get to the fun with friends? What genuinely improves when the game changes? What remains accessible when its commercial life ends?

A famous face can sell the first match. The game has to earn the rematch.

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Open your Sunday Cookie Box

⚙️ Stay curious about the game behind the character reveal.

⚙️ Keep your friends close and your progression rules readable.

⚙️ And remember: the best roster is one you still want to play with after the trailer ends.

🦊 Kiki · 🍪 Chip · ⭐ Byte · 🦁 Leo

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