MultiVersus developers Player First have been acquired by Warner Bros. ahead of tomorrow's season two

rockpapershotgun.com:

MultiVersus development studio Player First Games has been acquired by the game's publisher, Warner Bros. The studio's co-founders will continue to lead the studio. The platform figher's second season is due to go live tomorrow, adding a ranked mode and new characters Samurai Jack and Beetlejuice.

"Our team is excited to join the Warner Bros. Games family, and we feel that this will be great for MultiVersus overall. 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," said game director Tony Huynh in a statement sent to IGN.

MultiVersus is a free-to-play, live service brawler that draws its roster of characters from across Warner Bros. properties, from Looney Tunes to DC superheroes, Adventure Time to Rick & Morty. It's had a protracted development so far, launching in open beta back in 2022, postponing its first season of updates in response to feedback, then going offline entirely in early 2023 for re-tooling.

It returned on May 28th of this year, with revamped art, new characters and levels, and a PvE mode. We haven't paid it much mind around here since, although we liked the initial beta well enough. Our cousins over at Eurogamer were less kind towards the relaunch, calling it a Smash Bros. derivative spoiled by its monetisation.

I like Smash Bros. a good amount, both as a knockabout couch experience and as baby's-first-fighting-game to play with my kid. It's nice MultiVersus is an entry in the genre that's available on PC, but I can't imagine ditching Nintendo's take for a microtransaction treadmill with characters like Jason from Friday The 13th.