Like a lump of flesh that’s been carved off to be grafted back on with a cybernetic enhancement later, the Deus Ex series is on ice. Square Enix made the decision to cut the series - originally planned as a trilogy, as evident by Mankind Divided’s cliffhanger ending - in favour of Marvel’s Avengers.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided was an expensive project and it didn’t quite hit the sales targets the publisher hoped for. Marvel’s Avengers, meanwhile, was a sure thing - everyone loves superheroes, everyone loves Destiny, so smooshing those two things together seems like a no-brainer, right? If Steam stats are a good indicator, that line of thinking hasn’t quite worked out.
Over the last 24 hours, Marvel’s Avengers has managed a peak of just under 4,000 players. Even during launch, it managed to hit an all-time concurrent peak of 31,165. In comparison, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided hit an all-time peak of 52,485. This tells a story - especially since one of these games is a multiplayer game designed to be played forever, and one is a single-player RPG that apparently didn't sell well enough.
It’s also telling that, so far, Square Enix has been quiet about sales numbers of Marvel’s Avengers. While the game topped the physical sales charts during its first week of release, Marvel’s Avengers only sold a third of what PS4 exclusive Marvel’s Spider-Man sold. Avengers is multiplatform and multiplayer, and Spider-Man is on one console and single-player only. It paints a worrying picture for the future of the game.
Obviously, Square Enix could turn things around - this wouldn’t be the first service game to face a rocky launch and redeem itself. Then again, it could go the way of BioWare’s Anthem, which has been threatening to be reborn as something new ever since it launched.
It likely hasn’t helped that the Marvel’s Avengers launch was plagued with bugs and stability issues.