Whenever a publisher stealth-releases a game without much publicity, it’s usually not a good sign. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1 & 2 were released on Steam very suddenly, but you can’t keep something like that under wraps. Marvel fans are… passionate people. Tons of people bought the games separately and as a bundle, and everyone was pissed off. The ports were awful. The games weren’t enhanced in any way, they were full of bugs, controllers weren’t working, and performance was awful even on very capable machines. The whole package was a complete fiasco, and the worst part about it is Activision was charging players $40 for the games individually, and $60 for the bundle. Needless to say, many refunds have been issued.
Marvel Games’ Bill Rosemann vowed to carry players’ complaints to Activision, and he did. A patch for Marvel Ultimate Alliance has already gone live, fixing controller mapping issues, audio glitches, and UI bugs. Activision also had the following to say regarding DLC: “Both the standalone and bundled versions of Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 feature all of its original DLC. We are still working on making the DLC for the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance available in the coming weeks as a free update for everyone who has purchased the title on these platforms alone or as part of the bundle.”
Whether or not that will be enough to placate the legions of pissed off Marvel fans remains to be seen. Much more than free DLC, I think everyone really just wants whole, playable games that they paid good money for. Hopefully Activision actually allocates the resources necessary to clean up this mess.
Source: VG 24/7