Warner Bros. confirms MultiVersus underperformed, contributing to $100M loss

Less than a year after admitting that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s underperformance led to a $200M loss, Warner Bros. has acknowledged that another one of its superhero-adjacent live service multiplayer titles, the free-to-play multiplayer fighting game MultiVersus, has significantly underperformed and resulted in a $100 million loss for the company’s games division.

As reported by IGN, Warner Bros. Discovery President and CEO David Zaslav and Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels both acknowledged that Warner Bros.’ games subsidiary is struggling. Zaslav stated that the company’s games division is “substantially underperforming its potential right now“.  “We took another $100 million plus impairment due to the underperforming releases, primarily MultiVersus this quarter,” stated Wiedenfels, “bringing total writedown year-to-date to over $300 million in our games business, a key factor in this year’s studio profit decline.” According to Warner Bros.’ Q3 earnings results, its games division lost 31% in revenue compared to the same period last year, citing Mortal Kombat 1 as one of 2023 Q3’s successful releases.

The underperformance of MultiVersus is not entirely surprising; initially releasing in 2022 to considerable anticipation, the game went offline for nearly a year while developer Player First Games worked on improvements. Re-releasing earlier this year with new characters and PvE content, the game couldn’t quite regain its previous momentum after such a lengthy hiatus. Warner Bros. acquired Player First Games earlier this year, with the intention of furthering its investment in more live service titles. That said, with the underperformance of MultiVersus and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (not to mention live service disasters from other companies, such as Concord) it remains to be seen how sensible it is to continue investing into live service games like this without at least diversifying its output into other kinds of games as well.

Regarding the future of Warner Bros. games division, Zaslav confirms that the company will focus on four properties in particular: Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, and DC Comics. Some upcoming projects are known, such as Monolith Studios’ non-live service Wonder Woman game. Multiversus’ Season 4 will be launching on November 12th and ends January 21th 2025. The season will include Raven from DC Comics’ Teen Titans as well as Marceline the Vampire Queen from Adventure Time.