The new MultiVersus fighting game has been building the hype towards its release for quite a while now. A lot of people were thinking that this game was going to be just another Smash Bros reskin, but with the closed beta, it became clear this was something more than that. Now that the game is publicly available, it’s already smashing expectations. MultiVersus download numbers have already broken records for fighting games just on the first day of its wider release.
The reception and player retention seems healthy thus far. This is why MultiVersus has been such a success so far and what to expect for its esports as the game develops. MultiVersus was released widely in July, entering an open beta and letting players get access to the title without having to qualify for a closed select group of testers. The game has broken records for fighting games on the very first day of its release.
During the first day of the open beta, MultiVersus managed to achieve 144,456 concurrent players on Steam. This safely put it into the top four titles on the platform as a whole! That’s no small feat for any newly released game. For a fighting game though, it’s a complete outlier. As an Early Access game, these launch numbers definitely look positive. Another free-to-play Smash Bros-style platformer Brawlhalla has managed to pull in around 15,000 players. So, while the free-to-play factor is definitely helping, the MultiVersus download numbers are fantastic even in this category.
The game is getting regular new content and has managed to announce new fighters often enough to really keep the hype going. Heading into a wider release it looks like things won’t be slowing down for MultiVersus anytime soon.
Prior to this game’s release, the old record for fighting games was held by FighterZ, a Dragon Ball game released back in 2018. That record has been blown out of the water with MultiVersus though. A few thousand players are apparently enough for a fighting game to have great matchmaking. This size of a player base is really going to help make MultiVersus a smooth experience to play.
So now that we know that MultiVersus is shattering records on Twitch and for download numbers, what does this mean for fans of competitive fighting though? On the surface, this pretty much guarantees more than the initial tournaments will come to the game. MultiVersus is going to be making an esports debut around EVO this year, which is the biggest event in the fighting game community. Big names like SonicFox have already announced their intention to try and break into the platformer fighter genre with this release. All of this makes it look like the MultiVersus esports game is ready and waiting for players to jump into.
The upcoming tournament is going to be the game’s first major. MultiVersus looks like the big exciting new thing in fighting games. If it can keep this up, this might be one of those rare titles with the longevity to join the fighting game pantheon, though only time will tell.
