Warner Bros. acquires Multiversus developer Player First Games

Warner Bros. has formally acquired Player First Games, the developer behind the free-to-play multiplayer brawler MultiVersus. This comes several months after Warner Bros. CEO and President of Global Streaming and Games J.B. Perrette announced a plan to shift more towards more live-service, mobile, and free-to-play games.

“Our team is excited to join the Warner Bros. Games family, and we feel that this will be great for MultiVersus overall,” Huynh said in a press release. “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.”

In addition, WB Games’ president David Haddad stated that “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. The bright and creative team at Player First Games adds to our extensive development capabilities.”

Warner Bros. officially acquiring Player First Games, a studio specialising in free-to-play, live service titles is certainly in line with the publisher’s planned investments into more live service content. Despite the abysmal failure of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and MultiVersus’ own tribulations regarding mixed reviews and a not-great player count, it’s unlikely that Warner Bros. is going to stop chasing that gravy train anytime soon.

In the meantime, MultiVersus starts its second season of content this week. This update will add Samurai Jack and Beetlejuice as playable characters, among others. The new season will also introduce a new Ranked Mode, which will allow players to compete in 1v1 and 2v2 matches. Players can earn leaderboard points in order to score exclusive cosmetic rewards. A new map, the Water Tower, is also being added, which is chock full of nods and Easter Eggs for fans of classic Warner Bros. animation.

At any rate, Warner Bros’. acquisition of Player First games seems like a natural step in an industry where major publishers seem to be acquiring live-service-focused developers left and right. This is particularly noticeable in Sony’s hoovering up of Concord developer Firewalk Studios and Destiny 2 developer Bungie in recent years. Player First Games’ co-founders Tony Huynh and Chris White are set to continue to lead the studio. Hopefully the acquisition will have minimal impact on the studio’s staff and will provide the company the resources it needs to make MultiVersus as good as it can be.