Marvel Strike Force Epitomizes Why Players Are Wary Of Free-To-Play Games

When I played a pre-launch build of Marvel Strike Force at the 2018 Game Developers Conference, I was excited to dive into the multiversal battlefield the team at FoxNext created. From the start, I loved the turn-based combat and the growing list of Marvel heroes and villains. The compelling hero-collecting elements from Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes also attracted me. I couldn’t wait to Get the launch version for my smartphone. Marvel Strike Force launched on iOS and Android in March 2018 and I was hooked immediately. 

Early on, the premium elements felt pricey yet largely unnecessary if you played the game a decent amount and completed all your daily objectives. Sure, dropping some cash accelerated your progress, but I was largely free-to-play for the first year of the game’s life. The microtransactions that I made felt valuable and rewarding once I started spending some money. The transactions are less micro-like as the game nears the end of its fifth anniversary. offers ranging from $50 to $100 a popThese are becoming more popular in the marketplace.

It is possible to focus solely on gameplay and ignore premium deals. It works, to a certain extent. As I mentioned before, in the early days of Marvel Strike Force, spending money felt like a luxury purchase – nice-to-have bonuses that will either unlock new characters faster or power them up with less grinding. It is sometimes difficult to get massive rewards for events if you don’t spend hundreds. Current game event featuring tEcho, the character gives free-to play to players who spend a lot of time crafting character shards. She then awards those who have dropped a large sum of money with bonus points that will increase the disparity between the haves versus the have-nots.

There are plenty of free-to-play triple-A games that do it right, giving players a great experience, then offering up extra goodies if they feel like throwing some cash at the game. Marvel Strike Force, however, is not one of those games. Marvel Strike Force feels like it was designed to frustrate the players every step of its journey until they give up and buy. True, a videogame’s goal is a win. Profits. However, the game has been designed to make sure that the player doesn’t feel excluded or bad if they don’t spend enough. money, it showcases precisely why so many immediately lose interest when they hear a game that is free-to-play. 

Marvel Strike Force’s issues go beyond the constant siphoning off of player’s wallets. The game’s quality is continuing to drop despite Scopely as its parent reporting record growth and profit from the Marvel hero collection (to the tune 70 percent growth and $300 million in 2020). Marvel Strike Force currently crashes all the time when players do certain actions within its menus. In addition to the game-breaking glitch that accidentally rewarded players with exponential gold, causing the game to be taken offline for an entire evening in May 2021, players have endured glitched microtransactions, character kits not performing the way they’re described (often fixed by the team updating the text of the description instead of the kits themselves), and myriad other technical problems. In the last 24 hours alone, the game has displayed incorrect text telling players what the rewards will be for the next raid, plus the wrong art telling players basic Red Star orbs are granting 10x credits when they’re not. Scopely boasts how much the product makes the company money. Players should expect a quality product.

Scopely has no incentive to change when people continue spending money. Scopely has no incentive to make changes when players continue spending money. My spending has dropped dramatically over the past year. My disenchantment is not unique. The Marvel Strike Force Reddit Page is filled with similar complaints daily. Scopely’s loyal, invested fan base is willing to spend but the company could see its revenue drop if it continues upsetting its players. Although it’s a rumor, my Alliance has faced problems in the past two years with filling the vacant positions left by those who quit because of the greed-driven game design.

On top of all this, updates have continually ignored many of the quality-of-life improvements most often requested by the player base. The unfriendly, RNG-heavy red star system has been disliked by many since its inception, while the Real-Time Arena mode introduced in 2020 fell flat within the community, only adding to the amount of screentime Marvel Strike Force asks of players. Marvel Strike Force takes a lot more time than you might think, and requires commitment. Marvel Strike Force is as considerate of your time and budget as you are.

With all these mounting problems, you might be asking me why Marvel Strike Force has been and continues to be my daily game for so many years. It’s simple. I love the core gameplay and my favorite characters. As the issues continue and the game design is geared towards frustrating players to the point that they are willing to spend cash on it, I find it more challenging justify my dedication. The near future will be a similar situation to a restaurant taking a plunge in quality but increasing its price. This is a very difficult and sad decision. If Scopely and developer Boundless Entertainment continue to further alienate their player base in the name of profit, it’s inevitable that my ever-tenuous time spent in this game will become more a sunk-cost fallacy than an actual love of the game.