A new report has suggested that Crystal Dynamics is ready to cease development on Marvel's Avengers, a game that has struggled to remain relevant ever since its launch back in 2020. Earlier reports suggested that the game was going to be sunset at some point in 2023, although it's now being suggested that those plans have been accelerated, with Crystal Dynamics reportedly set to make an official announcement as early as next week.
According to the report for Xputer from reputable Marvel's Avengers insider Miller Ross, plans to end development on the title were originally set for the back end of 2023, but have been moved forward due to the departure of lead developer Brian Waggoner. If that name sounds familiar, Waggoner was recently removed as the spokesperson for the title due to racist and ableist tweets that were posted between 2010 and 2016.
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It now seems like Waggoner has been removed from the Crystal Dynamics team due to his comments and hasn't been replaced, which isn't too surprising considering plans to cease development were already underway. It's worth noting that this doesn't mean Marvel's Avengers will be disappearing from your console any time soon, but a number of changes are reportedly going to be made before Crystal Dynamics jumps ship.
According to Ross, the developers are set to remove time gating from the game and are currently working on changing the availability of cosmetic microtransactions. Ross also claims that the game will remain on sale digitally until at least September and that Crystal Dynamics will work to keep the game in a playable state for as long as there are people out there still playing it.
This news also means that several new characters that were originally planned to release over the next year will reportedly be scrapped. Long-awaited characters like She-Hulk and Captain Marvel will unfortunately never see the light of day, while rumored characters such as Shuri and Ironheart will also remain unreleased. For a lot of people, this has been a long time coming, but it's still pretty sad to see it go.