Following criticism from the community, developer Crystal Dynamics has announced that they removed paid consumables from the Marvel’s Avengers marketplace. Hero’s Catalysts and Fragment Extractors were available to purchase. Hero’s Catalysts increase the amount of XP players earn. Fragment Extractors increase the number of Fragments players can obtain. In other Marvel’s Avengers news, in Square Enix’s annual report for 2021, President Yosuke Matsuda said that the game was not as successful as they wanted it to be. Crystal Dynamics also released a new, updated roadmap with new content and reworks coming at the end of the month on November 30.
On Twitter, Crystal Dynamics said “we apologize for not responding sooner to your concerns about the addition of paid consumables in the Marketplace. We introduced them as an option for an evolving player base, and did not see them as pay-to-win since they don’t offer power directly.” Hero Catalysts and Fragment Extractors will still be earnable rewards and those who have them can still use them.
In the official Square Enix annual 2021 report, President Matsuda talked about and discussed the recent game released by the publisher. Regarding Marvel’s Avengers, Matsuda said “I would also note that Marvel’s Avengers was an ambitious title for us in that we took on the GaaS (Game as a Service) model. We overcame a variety of unexpected difficulties in the final phase of the game’s development, including needing to transition to work-from-home due to the pandemic. We were able to surmount these challenges and release the game, but it has unfortunately not proven as successful as we would have liked.”
Matsuda said that while the game is a disappointment, it offered a lesson in making sure that each game matches with the studio developing the game. “While the new challenge that we tackled with this title produced a disappointing outcome, we are certain that the GaaS approach will grow in importance as gaming becomes more service-oriented,” Matsuda said. “How we go about creating new experiences by incorporating this trend into our game design is a key question that we will need to answer going forward.”
Crystal Dynamics also recently shared an update regarding the content update roadmap. A slew of content and reworks us dropping on November 30. This includes the Klaw Raid, gear upgrade and resources reworks, earned cosmetics, the PlayStation exclusive Spider-Man Hero Event for PS4 and PS5, and more.