Nintendo

Oooh, what happened with Magic the Gathering?

Wizards of the Coast (the game manufacturer) announced they are going hard into "Universes Beyond" sets, which are based on 3rd party IP like LOTR, Final Fantasy or Marvel. They have been releasing a few of these in recent years, but next year that'll be half of their product line.

This is rather controversial for several reasons:

• A lot of players dislike this mish-mash of franchises, and see it a loss of identity of the game. This comic from 2020 has been reposted non-stop during the week as a prediction of the future of MTG.
• So far these sets have been more expensive, likely due to the IP licensing costs.
• They also announced a change where all competitive formats will include those sets, removing the option to play without them.

There's a lot of discussion going on if this is just the cynical attempt at short-term cash grab sacrificing the long-term health of the game, or if this new focus will help increasing the playerbase.

And that adds to a few other problems that are already plaguing the game.

• Product and wallet burnout: They doubled the amount of new cards being released in the last ~4 years making it very hard to keep up. And they announced even more sets in 2025 so this will probably continue keep getting worse.
• Power creep: This is something that always existed in the game, but also sped up a lot recently. There's also concerns that they'll push cards too hard to ensure these "Universes Beyond" sets sell - as an example we had a LOTR set last year and "The One Ring" was an game-warping card. Even worse, 18 months later it hasn't been banned and lot of people are questioning if this is going to be the trend with these sets.

For a lot of people this was the breaking point to drop out of the game, or change the way they interact with it. I'm moving away from competitive play for good, and will only play unnoficial "nostalgia" formats based on the game's past like Premodern (1995-2003) or 2015 Modern (2003-2015) where I can just stick to old decks and ignore all new releases.

TL;DR: "Magic the Gathering" is now "Fortnite the Gathering", and a lot of people are pissed.