The Fantastic Four aren’t getting a lot of love in Marvel Comics at the moment, and now that lack of love looks to be extending to Gazillion’s massively multiplayer Marvel Heroes. Starting July 1, players will no longer be able to purchase Fantastic Four characters or costumes.
According to a post on the Marvel Heroes forums yesterday, players will be unable to buy The Thing, Invisible Woman, Mr. Fantastic or the Human Torch as of July first. Unlocking the characters via in-game currency is also being suspended as of today.
Under Gazillion’s renewed licensing agreement we do not have the rights to continue selling these characters moving forward. However, players who have already purchased or unlocked any of these affected characters and costumes before July 1 will be able to them continue playing them as usual.
While the changes do not affect Doctor Doom, a character who plays a large part in the game’s storyline, frequent FF guest Silver Surfer is also being pulled from sale, as well as costumes for characters like Spider-Man and Ghost Rider that make reference to Fantastic Four comics continuity.
Players who have already purchased Fantastic Four items can continue to use them, and Gazillion has pledged to continue supporting the existing characters with balance tweaks and updates.
The licensing change likely has something to do with Marvel cooling its heels on the Fantastic Four, perhaps in a bid to make the property less attractive to Fox, owners and frequent mishandlers of the team’s movie rights. We’ve reached out to Gazillion for more info.
Here’s a full list of the costumes that will no longer be available for sale come July 1.
- Spider-Man Future Foundation
- Spider-Man Future Foundation Black
- Spider-Man Bag Man
- Ghost Rider — What if?
- Doctor Doom Future Foundation
- Mr. Fantastic Future Foundation
- Invisible Woman Future Foundation
- Invisible Woman Future Foundation Black
- Invisible Woman All New Marvel NOW!
- Thing Future Foundation
- Mr. Fantastic All New Marvel NOW!
- Mr. Fantastic Future Foundation Black
- Invisible Woman’s Ultimate FF
- Thing All New Marvel NOW!
- Thing Black Future Foundation
- Thing Black Jersey
- Thing Fantastic Pants
- Thing Fear Itself
- Thing Incognito
- Thing Modern
- Human Torch 2099
- Human Torch Classic Blue
- Human Torch Light Brigade
- Human Torch Modern
- Human Torch Original
- Human Torch Red
- Human Torch Uncanny Inhumans
- Silver Surfer Classic
- Silver Surfer Exiles
- Silver Surfer Keeper
- Silver Surfer Silver Savage
Comments
15 responses to “Marvel Heroes Stops Selling Fantastic Four Stuff”
Meh. Marvel Heroes isn’t great. Pretty much any other free MMORPG.
It was great. I’d logged in and played it almost every day since launch. Such a fantastically fun, fast-paced action RPG set in the Marvel Universe with an amazing reverence to the lore of same that only enhanced the enjoyment for a die-hard Marvel fan like myself.
Then they got a new dev team who did a “Biggest Update Ever” in January which made the game a shadow of its former glorious self.
Movement speed and powers got nerfed hard to accommodate the then-upcoming console version, making the gameplay slower, more sluggish, and much less fun.
There have been bugs in the game since that BUE in January that are still there today (Nightcrawler’s bamf being one such bug).
And now they’re making the Fantastic Four characters and a bunch of costumes unavailable to purchase, despite the fact Marvel are set to launch a new Thing ongoing series with the revival of Marvel Two-in-One in October, not to mention the hype surrounding the possible return of the FF in Marvel Legacy that same month.
I never understood the fan fare for comics first super hero family. Their real contribution seems to be Doom, Galactus, SS, etc.
Evil Reed is a fun character when he shows up, however DOOM is all we ever needed (and thankfully he’s staying put).
I see someone reads Infamous.
I am super confused about what looks like
Sorcerer Supreme TonyFF has incredible bad guys. But the actual FF are bland as sand.
Marvel is clearly prepping for a buy-back. Fanfourstic sunk the IP for sony, i wonder what they think it’s worth.
Once that lands, hopefully they’ll invest in a new comic run to inject some modern complexity into the characters. They’re currently known to be as shallow as a hanna barbera cartoon, but there’s plenty of meat to the setup.
I am going to guess that in order to sweeten the Spidey deal, Marvel agreed with Sony on discontinuing most marketing and merchandise of the F4 and let them take care of that.
Fantastic Four is Fox, not Sony.
Duh, right.
Whatta revoltin’ development!
I have a great deal of affection for the FF, especially John Byrne’s run in the 1980’s which managed to recapture and improve on the original Kirby/Lee run. The Thing is easily my favourite Marvel character (though She-Hulk comes close… and she’s FF as well!).
They just need the right writer, really.
If you haven’t already, Jonathan Hickman’s run on Fantastic Four, and FF, was very well done. Especially recommend it if you have a Marvel Unlimited Subscription as it’s a LOT of story.
I may follow up on that, thanks. My local library usually gets graphic volumes after a year or two, so I can probably check it out there.
Was that the run with the post Secret Wars send off? Pretty sure I liked that.
Kinda. Hickman wrote Fantastic Four and FF from 2009 to 2011, which includes story elements that pay off in Secret Wars in far off 2016.
In fact, most of his Marvel stuff is interconnected across each of the titles he writes. I’m still picking up plot elements from his Secret Warriors and S.H.I.E.L.D. series that doesn’t pay off until his Avengers run. The guy plays a long game!