Those who have been following the story of Crystal Dynamic’s Marvel’s Avengers know that the game has struggled to meet expectations many fans had of it since its release on August 14, 2020. And as of yesterday, Crystal Dynamics has finally pulled Marvel’s Avengers from digital storefronts as they said they would at the beginning of the year.
This doesn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone, the live-service superhero-based video game has had a troubled history since its release, and the number of problems is almost too numerous to count. From a glitch that came with patch that would show your username and IP address, to monetizing the game with pay-to-win items that they had to pull month later from the sheer amount of fan backlash, all culminating in an insane $63 million dollar loss for its then publisher Square Enix, Marvel’s Avengers has lived a tumultuous life up to this point.
That’s not even getting into critiques of the game itself, which was released in a very bug-ridden state and beyond that described as boring and short owing to the game’s lack of innovation and bare-bones depth with an intentionally brief story mode, to its reliance on live-service development model to justify the game’s shoddy initial state, something the gaming community has been pushing back on since the inception of the concept.
Even the game’s last act, making every cosmetic free for every player in the final stretch of its lifespan, came with criticism: many who had purchased the game and bought the DLC costumes and emotes were questioning whether or not their money would be refunded for the purchases they made when the cosmetics weren’t free and were angered when they discovered it wouldn’t be.
Indeed, Crystal Dynamic’s Marvel’s Avengers could be seen as a cautionary tale for many developers about the inconsistency of the live-service model, as many in the gaming community would prefer to see their games completed at launch, rather than released half-finished with a promise that it will get patched to completion later, a promise that Marvel’s Avengers can no longer fulfill as it has now left digital stores.