Marvel’s New Card Game Is Fixing Its Monetization Problem

Marvel Snap is a brand-new card game from studio Second Dinner, made up of ex-Hearthstone developers. So they should know how to make a fun PvP card game, which they did, based on impressions online so far.

Its monetization scheme, however, needed some work. While it wouldn’t be fair to ask developers to publish a game for free and not make money out of a free-to-play game, the game’s Nexus Events is rather dubious, to the point that the developers had to scrap it and give everyone a Jane Foster base card as an apology.

Why was it bad? Because it was heavily-criticized by its fledging player base for its over-aggressive monetization and also misrepresenting and poorly describing/explaining the likelihood of higher tier rewards dropping. The event itself has very low drop rates, meaning players can spend hundreds of dollars to acquire them. The common rewards were also just in-game currency and resources for card-upgrading. Here’s a quote from a Reddit user that summed up the event’s problem very well:

“My biggest gripe is that a ‘nexus event’ is not an event at all. You don’t participate in this event, just dump your wallet into it.”

Long story short: if you tell your player base that you can get every card in your game over time without paying anything, and then two months later restrict a powerful card (the Jane Foster card in question) to people willing to pay for it, you will piss them off.

At the very least, Second Dinner is fixing the issue by scrapping Nexus Events and returning gold players have spent at the event:

“With Marvel Snap’s next patch, any gold you’ve spent on Nexus Events will be returned. Additionally, we will grant the Jane Foster base card to ALL players regardless of [whether] you participated in Nexus Events. For new accounts created after this patch, Jane Foster can be unlocked in Pool 3.”

An update regarding Nexus Events pic.twitter.com/QQcReZ8Xr4

— MARVEL SNAP (@MARVELSNAP) August 2, 2022

Marvel Snap is currently in closed beta on Android devices; the PC version will be out soon.