The option that the makers of MultiVersus give players the ability to buy more lives with real money during campaign missions is actually a "bug" and the game as you might imagine, I— and many other people — have a question.

Warner Bros.' answer to Smash Bros. brought big returns last week after nearly 1 year of dormancy, bringing a new campaign mode that includes the ability to replenish life with real money. It struck me as not a particularly big deal, but given the reaction to the options on Reddit, many MultilVersus fans felt differently as people who spent a lot of time exchanging money for life in various local arcades. 

Under the bug, the player was able to buy a refill full of life — the number was not specified, but reportedly 6—for10. As some Redditors have pointed out, however, it actually goes more than that: A bundle of 1,000 Gleamium in-game currency is 1-10, while a full refill costs 1,004 Gleamium.

In a subsequent message posted on Twitter, Player First Games reported improvements in performance, game end statistics, and more. We've laid out some extensive stroke plans for future MultiVersus updates, including the addition of new features, the option to turn off team colors, and more. 

"We also want to let you know that the option to purchase extra lives is a bug being addressed and not an intended feature in the game," the studio tweeted.

I'm not a programmer, so I might be off base here, but my understanding of the "bug" is a malfunction. In the first blush, it seems that this is not the case here, as this is clearly an option developed deliberately for the game. However, some players have stated that the "bug" in question is not the feature itself, but the fact that it is available with a "crazy" difficulty.

The highest "Rooney" difficulty in the game states that players "have to complete the game with a limited number of lives per day" and points out that they can buy more if they don't want to wait for it to be automatically replenished. The difficulty of "crazy", which took a step back, was not supposed to have a limited life, but there was an option to buy more anyway. That difficulty is now disabled.

So it seems that this was certainly not a bug, but an attempt to slip even more monetization without going unnoticed. So why not say so? According to the player-first message, the option to replenish the life "is not an intended function in the game" and stops completely, but in all appearances, it is an intended function in the game, not its difficulty. Rooney's difficulty is not supposed to be unlocked until 7 May 10 in you can argue that it is not intended to be in the game right now

even if that is the case and this whole thing was a problem of bad communication, it is still going to satisfy some players. No: 10bucks for six lives is the kind of pay-to-play monetization we mostly associate with mobile gacha games. Yes, you can wait until the life is replenished, but everyone knows that at least some of the player base is not going to do it. That's the principle that free-to-play games are supposed to be, and I generally don't have a problem with that, but when the price gets higher, because of that small reward, "Yeah,

There's no mention of bugs in the 1.01 patch notes published earlier today, so I don't know when the crazy difficulty will come back, and if it's actually What happens here I've reached out to WB Games for more information and will be updated if I receive a reply.