Marvel's Avengers will have Spiderman as part of future update. BBBUUUTTTTT.....

[FakeSympathy]

It is Playstation exclusive, as many articles states. Spiderman will be part of a free content update in early 2021 It is unclear whether this is a permanent or timed exclusive. As you might've guessed, some fans have left pissed-off replies on the twitter post.

I mean given how Spiderman game is ps4 exclusive, I had a suspicion that something like this would happen, but I am surprised to see that Marvel, Disney, Sony, and Crstyal Dynamic were able to work this out (I am still not sure who owns Spiderman IP. Someone please clarify this?)

I am curious if other platforms will have exclusive heroes of their own now. Maybe Black Panther, Vision, Dr. Strange, Quicksilver & Scarlet Witch, etc?

I also just realized that Avenger is the only thing that Square Enix had for the virtual E3 this year.

 

[sXeth]

(I am still not sure who owns Spiderman IP. Someone please clarify this?)

Well the problem therein lies.

Marvel (which is owned by Disney at this point), owns the basic Spiderman IP. They will regain ownership of any rights that lapse/etc.


They never did give up the comic publishing right, so they've still got that, and probably novels too if they actually wanted to do that (I can't recall actual comic novelizations since DC did DEath of Superman and Knightfall in that format).


Sony in preparation for the early 2000s movies, gained the films rights. Which I believe also had some overlap with Fox's (now owned by Disney) rights to create a cartoon of it. Sony still has the movie rights, as long as they periodically pump out some kind of Spiderman movie to keep it alive. Whether Fox still has the cartoon is irrelevant cause they got absorbed into the Disney blob to join Marvel.


Spidey showing up in the Disney MCU and vice-versa is essentially some kind of agreement between Sony and Disney, which apparently can get busted at any time (there was that big upset last year about it).


Sony at some point also picked up the videogame rights to Spiderman. I"m not sure when that specifically became exclusive, as there were older titles on PS2 (Ultimate Alliance and that meh fighting game (Imperfects?)) that were cross-platform and had Spidey in it. Nonetheless for this decade, Sony has had Spidey's videogame rights. Which they are extending to Square in this instance, but only for their platform.

 

[BrawlMan]

Not surprised in the slightest and saw it coming.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Sony has had exclusive rights to Spider-man for years now. This isn't surprising nor a big deal.

You should be playing on Playstation anyway so it shouldn't matter lol.

 

[SilentPony]

Well the problem therein lies.

Marvel (which is owned by Disney at this point), owns the basic Spiderman IP. They will regain ownership of any rights that lapse/etc.


They never did give up the comic publishing right, so they've still got that, and probably novels too if they actually wanted to do that (I can't recall actual comic novelizations since DC did DEath of Superman and Knightfall in that format).


Sony in preparation for the early 2000s movies, gained the films rights. Which I believe also had some overlap with Fox's (now owned by Disney) rights to create a cartoon of it. Sony still has the movie rights, as long as they periodically pump out some kind of Spiderman movie to keep it alive. Whether Fox still has the cartoon is irrelevant cause they got absorbed into the Disney blob to join Marvel.


Spidey showing up in the Disney MCU and vice-versa is essentially some kind of agreement between Sony and Disney, which apparently can get busted at any time (there was that big upset last year about it).


Sony at some point also picked up the videogame rights to Spiderman. I"m not sure when that specifically became exclusive, as there were older titles on PS2 (Ultimate Alliance and that meh fighting game (Imperfects?)) that were cross-platform and had Spidey in it. Nonetheless for this decade, Sony has had Spidey's videogame rights. Which they are extending to Square in this instance, but only for their platform.

Wow this summary was super easy, barely an inconvenience.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

The gist of it is that Sony has owned the Spider-Man IP since the Raimi movies, and it can pimp the property so long as there's a paying customer. If Spidey doesn't show up in the Avengers game then blame Disney for not putting down the money for it. It's their game anyway.

 

[laggyteabag]

You should be playing on Playstation anyway so it shouldn't matter lol.

Why should I?

I planned on getting this game on my PC, because that is where I like to play 99% of my games, and now I feel like I will have to get this on my PS4, otherwise I will be playing an incomplete game.

"But that isn't such a big deal" I hear you say, but the thing is, I don't play all that many games on my PS4, so I don't have PS+ either, which for this game, looks quite essential.

So for me to play the complete version of this game, I would need to buy the game on a platform that I don't really enjoy, and fork out extra for the ability to play online? Sounds stupid to me.

Honestly, this is such a dealbreaker for me, that I don't even really want the game anymore.

Also, im not quite sure on how the Spider-Man videogame rights work? Obviously there is the PS4 exclusive Spider-Man game that came out a couple of years ago, and that specific franchise of games is going to continue to be exclusive for the foreseeable future, but Spider-Man and pals appear in the Nintendo Switch game Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, which came out afterwards, so it doesn't seem like the character is exclusive to one platform - at least as of July 2019. It just sucks that development time has been spent creating a whole character, that only players from a single platform can play, instead of creating something that everyone can enjoy. It just alienates the rest of the audience.

 

[XsjadoBlayde]

Eh, the rights have been pretty well nabbed by Sony for years now, it's surprising he even got into the MCU. thought this was old news?
Nevermind that though, this Spiderman is apparently yet another different imagining than the pS4 Peter Parker...jeysus chryst, it's all getting so blurry like one of those suits from A Scanner Darkly!

 

[CriticalGaming]

Why should I?

I planned on getting this game on my PC, because that is where I like to play 99% of my games, and now I feel like I will have to get this on my PS4, otherwise I will be playing an incomplete game.

"But that isn't such a big deal" I hear you say, but the thing is, I don't play all that many games on my PS4, so I don't have PS+ either, which for this game, looks quite essential.

So for me to play the complete version of this game, I would need to buy the game on a platform that I don't really enjoy, and fork out extra for the ability to play online? Sounds stupid to me.

Honestly, this is such a dealbreaker for me, that I don't even really want the game anymore.

Also, im not quite sure on how the Spider-Man videogame rights work? Obviously there is the PS4 exclusive Spider-Man game that came out a couple of years ago, and that specific franchise of games is going to continue to be exclusive for the foreseeable future, but Spider-Man and pals appear in the Nintendo Switch game Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, which came out afterwards, so it doesn't seem like the character is exclusive to one platform - at least as of July 2019. It just sucks that development time has been spent creating a whole character, that only players from a single platform can play, instead of creating something that everyone can enjoy. It just alienates the rest of the audience.

If you were interested and eager in the Avengers game before the spider man announcement. Then you didnt care about spiderman being there in the first place and his presence on another platform is meaningless.

Also it is most likely a timed exclusive and spiderman will come to other places later. Just wait for the "complete" edition if it means that much to you.

Also he is post launch dlc so you wouldnt even get him at the begining anyway. So how is the game incomplete and how would your launch experience suffer from not having a character that doesnt exist yet?

 

[laggyteabag]

If you were interested and eager in the Avengers game before the spider man announcement. Then you didnt care about spiderman being there in the first place and his presence on another platform is meaningless.

Also it is most likely a timed exclusive and spiderman will come to other places later. Just wait for the "complete" edition if it means that much to you.

Also he is post launch dlc so you wouldnt even get him at the begining anyway. So how is the game incomplete and how would your launch experience suffer from not having a character that doesnt exist yet?

I don't look at games with blinkers on. If I did, then im sure I would be a much happier person overall, because ignorance is bliss, but sadly, this is real life, and like many other things, context is important.

Firstly, there is no indication that this is a timed-exclusive:

We can’t wait for you to add Spider-Man to your Marvel’s Avengers roster in early 2021, and as we’ve promised before, he will be available at no additional cost to owners of the base game, exclusively on PlayStation.

Secondly, this is a live service game, and live service games are a lot more than what state they launch in. You have to consider what the game might look like in a few months, or even a year or so, and finding out that a planned major content update is locked behind an arbitrary barrier, is really off-putting.

If this was a timed exclusive, then this wouldn't be a big deal. If this was a cosmetic skin, or something similar, this wouldn't be a big deal. But this is a literal entire playable character, who is planned to be in the game, but will be completely absent from other platforms. This is a pretty big deal.

Im sure if you were planning on getting this game on PS4/5 anyway, then this wouldn't be a problem at all and "ha ha, sucks to be you", but for everyone else that was excited to get this game on another platform, only to find out that they will be missing out on a big update, really, really sucks.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Secondly, this is a live service game, and live service games are a lot more than what state they launch in. You have to consider what the game might look like in a few months, or even a year or so, and finding out that a planned major content update is locked behind an arbitrary barrier, is really off-putting.

So buy it at a later date when all the content is available. A live service game is never complete at launch and if content complete is important to you, then wait until they're done with new game content and buy it when it's finished.

Im sure if you were planning on getting this game on PS4/5 anyway, then this wouldn't be a problem at all and "ha ha, sucks to be you", but for everyone else that was excited to get this game on another platform, only to find out that they will be missing out on a big update, really, really sucks.

Again platform exclusive content is not new or unusual. Call of Duty, Nintendo, Tomb Raider, Soul Cailbur and many more have had platform exclusive content. Usually when content is exclusive it isn't that big of a deal. In the case of Soul Cailbur for example, that game had a completely different roster depending on the platform you got the game on. And nobody gave a shit. Tomb Raider had an exclusive PSVR mode because Microsoft doesn't care about innovation in gaming, this mode was then later ported to PC.

So console exclusive shit happens all the time and will continue to happen.

Again it is a post launch thing, and I'm sure the other platforms will get post launch characters Spider-man is just the first one to get announced. Thus if you buy the game at launch, you'll get the same experience as everyone else at launch. So this post-launch DLC has zero effect on your release window experience.

 

[laggyteabag]

So buy it at a later date when all the content is available. A live service game is never complete at launch and if content complete is important to you, then wait until they're done with new game content and buy it when it's finished.

Im not quite sure what part of my argument appears to be going over your head, but you seem to be arguing a point that im not making. Im not complaining about how the game wont be content complete at launch - this is a live-service game, and that comes with the territory. My issue stems completely and entirely from the fact that it looks like a major update to this game will not be available - and will likely never be available - to people who decide to buy the game on Xbox One/Series X, or PC.

Again platform exclusive content is not new or unusual. Call of Duty, Nintendo, Tomb Raider, Soul Cailbur and many more have had platform exclusive content. Usually when content is exclusive it isn't that big of a deal. In the case of Soul Cailbur for example, that game had a completely different roster depending on the platform you got the game on. And nobody gave a shit. Tomb Raider had an exclusive PSVR mode because Microsoft doesn't care about innovation in gaming, this mode was then later ported to PC.

I see your point, but these are bad examples. The Tomb Raider VR mode literally cannot be on the Xbox, because it does not support VR. Not to mention that the VR section of the game, is literally just being able to explore the mansion, which is something that you can already do without VR. Whether or not you have this mode, is entirely inconsequential.

SoulCalibur's lineup changing between platforms is silly, but "Xbox gets Y, PlayStation gets Z" is not the same as "PlayStation gets Z, everybody else misses out", which is exactly what is happening here. Again, if this was something inconsequential, like an exclusive skin, I wouldn't give two shits, but this isn't inconsequential.

Most multiplatform games with console exclusive features tend to come in the form of timed exclusive features, like the recent CoD game's survival mode, or some exclusive weapons/armour in Destiny 1 & 2. If this was the same thing here, then it would be a bummer, but not too much of a problem - but it isn't.

Thus if you buy the game at launch, you'll get the same experience as everyone else at launch. So this post-launch DLC has zero effect on your release window experience

Again, I understand that the launch experience will be the same across the board, but this is a live-service game, so the game is a lot more than just how the game releases. After this Spider-Man DLC launches, one portion of the audience will get a drastic upgrade to their game and experience, that no one else will get. There will literally never be anything close to feature parity between the different platforms.

Do you not see how this is a problem, and a massive slap in the face to someone else who was looking at picking up the game on their platform of choice?

 

[CriticalGaming]

Do you not see how this is a problem, and a massive slap in the face to someone else who was looking at picking up the game on their platform of choice?

No I don't see how this is a problem because it is highly likely that other platforms will get DLC characters as well.

Just because they haven't been announced yet doesn't mean they wont happen. And like most console exclusive content, it is likely temporary.

If Spider-Man doesn't come to other platforms it is because Sony OWNS Spider-man and there ain't shit anyone can do about it. So be upset about it if you want, or just play the game on PC because it's as complete as it can be on a Non-Sony platform.

Again, if you were interested and excited for the Avengers game before Spider-Man's announcement, then you are still getting the game you expected because you were excited before you even knew Spider-man would or could be a thing. Since the game isn't out yet, your claim that a new character is a drastic upgrade is not provable. We have no idea the effect another character would have on a game not out yet, and Spider-man being exclusive doesn't mean other characters wont also come out. What if PC gets Wolverine? Or Deadpool?

Or you could just buy it on PS4 since you said you have one.

Frankly the fact that this is a live service game at all is a big turn of for me personally because live service games are fucking money-grubbing bullshit 99% of the time.

 

[FennecZephyr]

No I don't see how this is a problem because it is highly likely that other platforms will get DLC characters as well.

Just because they haven't been announced yet doesn't mean they wont happen. And like most console exclusive content, it is likely temporary.

If Spider-Man doesn't come to other platforms it is because Sony OWNS Spider-man and there ain't shit anyone can do about it. So be upset about it if you want, or just play the game on PC because it's as complete as it can be on a Non-Sony platform.

Again, if you were interested and excited for the Avengers game before Spider-Man's announcement, then you are still getting the game you expected because you were excited before you even knew Spider-man would or could be a thing. Since the game isn't out yet, your claim that a new character is a drastic upgrade is not provable. We have no idea the effect another character would have on a game not out yet, and Spider-man being exclusive doesn't mean other characters wont also come out. What if PC gets Wolverine? Or Deadpool?

Or you could just buy it on PS4 since you said you have one.

Frankly the fact that this is a live service game at all is a big turn of for me personally because live service games are fucking money-grubbing bullshit 99% of the time.

You're just like, the king of shit takes today, arent you?

 

[CriticalGaming]

You're just like, the king of shit takes today, arent you?

Today AND every other day.

 

[BrawlMan]

Take it away, Jim.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Take it away, Jim.

I actually hated Jim's point on this. Because he never once mentions that it's POST launch DLC. Meaning that the version everyone buys will be the same on launch. But that doesn't mean that each version will remain that way. In fact I'll just quote myself.

"Isn't it the right of a business to try and make their product the best looking product on the market? I don't understand the viewpoint of how exclusivity is a bad thing? Companies use exclusivity to bring you to their platform. Is Bloodborne a shady practice because it's only on Playstation? Is McDonald's a bastard for hogging all the Big Macs? Like this is such a non issue thing that is basically meaningless.

They aren't devaluing the rest of the Avengers releases just because Spider-man is sony only. They are just offering MORE on Playstation. Did Tomb Raider have this issue when they offered a VR mode exclusively to Playstation? Since Xbox doesn't have VR does that mean the value of Tomb Raider was less on Xbox? Technically....yeah, but it didn't matter. You are still getting the full game on any platform. This feels like such a non-issue."

Frankly the game is adding a lot of DLC for free anyway, which asks the question. If these extra characters are so important and so valuable, then why aren't they going to be there at launch? Is this just going to be another AAA-game that releases a half-finished game and hop the updates fix it later? Because if you make the characters as content argument, then nobody is getting the complete experience at launch because the game will be missing a bunch of characters in the first place.

And considering again that Spider-man isn't going to be added for like 6 months AFTER release, he can't possibly be that important.

So I ask again? What's the big fucking deal here?

 

[BrawlMan]

I actually hated Jim's point on this. Because he never once mentions that it's POST launch DLC. Meaning that the version everyone buys will be the same on launch. But that doesn't mean that each version will remain that way. In fact I'll just quote myself.

"Isn't it the right of a business to try and make their product the best looking product on the market? I don't understand the viewpoint of how exclusivity is a bad thing? Companies use exclusivity to bring you to their platform. Is Bloodborne a shady practice because it's only on Playstation? Is McDonald's a bastard for hogging all the Big Macs? Like this is such a non issue thing that is basically meaningless.

They aren't devaluing the rest of the Avengers releases just because Spider-man is sony only. They are just offering MORE on Playstation. Did Tomb Raider have this issue when they offered a VR mode exclusively to Playstation? Since Xbox doesn't have VR does that mean the value of Tomb Raider was less on Xbox? Technically....yeah, but it didn't matter. You are still getting the full game on any platform. This feels like such a non-issue."

Frankly the game is adding a lot of DLC for free anyway, which asks the question. If these extra characters are so important and so valuable, then why aren't they going to be there at launch? Is this just going to be another AAA-game that releases a half-finished game and hop the updates fix it later? Because if you make the characters as content argument, then nobody is getting the complete experience at launch because the game will be missing a bunch of characters in the first place.

And considering again that Spider-man isn't going to be added for like 6 months AFTER release, he can't possibly be that important.

So I ask again? What's the big fucking deal here?

Look, I'm not throwing a tantrum about this, but I can see all three of your points. You, Jim, and @laggyteabag, but I side more so with the latter two. Even though it's post-launch DLC, PC and Xbox players well either get it at a way later date while still being charged $60, or not at all. You can spin it any way you want dude, but it's the same boring crap the triple a gaming sphere usually does. I have next to no interest with this game at this point, but I will always call out shoddy business practices when I see it. Especially whenever it comes "live services" to single player games.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Look, I'm not throwing a tantrum about this, but I can see all three of your coins. You, Jim, and @laggyteabag, but I side more so with the ladder two. Even though it's post-launch DLC, PC and Xbox players well either get it at a way later date while still being charged $60, or not at all. You can spend it any way you want dude, but it's the same boring crap the triple a gaming sphere usually does. I have next to no interest with this game at this point, but I will always call out shoddy business practices when I see it. Especially whenever it comes "live services" to single player games.

Fair enough.

I think my issue utlimately boils down to not thinking that exclusivity is a shady business practice.

Every company uses exclusivity of some kind to bring customers in. Thats the point of running a business. You try to offer something that your competitors cant. And in the video games space in which everybody is mostly getting the same shit, if you can snag yourself a piece of post game extra exclusive things, then that would help steer people your way.

I really dont see the problem with that. That is how business works. And again everybody is basically getting the same game for their 60 bucks. Nobody is short changed, sony people will get something a bit extra 6 months after everyone is bored with the game in the first place. Good for them. Irrelevant for everyone else.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Fair enough.

I think my issue utlimately boils down to not thinking that exclusivity is a shady business practice.

Every company uses exclusivity of some kind to bring customers in. Thats the point of running a business. You try to offer something that your competitors cant. And in the video games space in which everybody is mostly getting the same shit, if you can snag yourself a piece of post game extra exclusive things, then that would help steer people your way.

I really dont see the problem with that. That is how business works. And again everybody is basically getting the same game for their 60 bucks. Nobody is short changed, sony people will get something a bit extra 6 months after everyone is bored with the game in the first place. Good for them. Irrelevant for everyone else.

I personally think the issue is, two years from now, if we've both bought the same game on different platforms, why should our experiences be any different? Exclusivity used to be reserved to console sellers like Halo, Gears of War, Uncharted, Mario, etc. Now, the industry is just being petty wherein you can buy the same game on multiple platforms and have as many differing experiences (no matter how nominal,) why? Why not focus on selling your platform with standout titles that make yours the platform to own instead of partitioning a piece of a multi-platform title as your own in a blatant cash grab? I really don't care, but I can see why some take issue with stuff like this, particularly in the current age of "quantity over quality" being the mantra chanted at the feet of uninterested investors.