Despite being little more than a month old, Marvel’s Avengers appears to be in major trouble.
As a live service title, recurring player engagement is essential in ensuring the long term health of Crystal Dynamics’ triple-A superhero adventure, and that key asset is something that’s currently under threat of evaporating beyond recovery. In the latest, most noticeable slump, concurrent player numbers for Marvel’s Avengers on Steam (the home of PC’s largest gaming audience by a wide margin) fell below 1,000, levelling out at a weak 972. For a game just barely over the 30-day mark of active duty and one intended to keep Marvel fans hopelessly hooked for months, if not years, on end, that’s not a good sign, to say the least.
Unfortunately for Crystal, there’s no one underlying cause responsible for this mass exodus, but rather, several. From a lack of open communication between fan and developer to egregious bugs and lacklustre endgame content, it certainly doesn’t take a perceptive mind to discern where Marvel’s Avengers is falling short of expectations and the important question now, is: can Crystal right the ship, so to speak, before it’s too late?
It’s far too early in the day to even hazard a guess in that regard, though something needs to happen, and fast. Both Anthem and, to a lesser extent, Destiny, have fallen foul of similar issues in the past, and while the latter ultimately managed to bounce back (Destiny 2 retains a solid fanbase), BioWare’s crack at the live service model crashed and burned just as fast as it took flight.
It goes without saying, of course, that we hope a brighter future lies ahead for Marvel’s Avengers, but what do you think? Is this a situation the IP can recover from, or is this the beginning of the end for what was originally billed as one of this year’s biggest releases? Let us know in the usual place below!
