The reasoning behind "no more mutants" doesn't make sense, does it?

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Beer40
Beer40 Posts: 826 Critical Contributor
in MPQ General Discussion
While we have no factual data, we can speculate on this topic. However, the most common reasons for this game not adding more Mutants that I see are these: (in parentheses I will debunk these myths)

1) Marvel doesn't own the rights to the Mutants (Incorrect: Marvel owns all rights except TV/movie.)
2) MPQ has no reason to promote characters Marvel doesn't completely own (Incorrect: Another Marvel licensed game, Clash of Champions is seeing the financial benefits from adding Mutants, who are very much requested. MPQ has many financial reasons to add these characters.)
3) Marvel is trying to bury the Mutant brand (Incorrect: Marvel has new comics titles out for Mutants as well as Mutants appearing in other games, like Clash of Champions.)

One argument may actually hold merit:
4) Licenses for Mutants are expensive (Correct? Incorrect? We don't have this information. We do know that other games, such as Clash of Champions, are getting Mutants. Maybe their contract with Marvel is different? That would be my guess.)

As is, I've debunked 3 of the "No more Mutants in MPQ" myths. The fourth one I simply can't confirm or deny, just as none of the rest of you can. 

I don't think its out of place to ask for an official comment on this from @Brigby or another MPQ representative. If its confidential info or a contractual obligation to not speak on the matter, maybe we could get a comment as simple as that. If there is reasoning that could be shared with the player base, I think MPQ would generate an extremely large amount of goodwill by simply telling us the reason/reasons. 
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  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 9,860 Chairperson of the Boards
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    There is no consistent reasoning to any of this.

    You could be correct that it is a financial issue with the cost of licensing X-Men/FF characters being high but then you have to wonder why a company such as gaming giant Capcom has not included any in the upcoming game? Possibly it was a contractual term from Marvel but it makes little sense, especially for a game like the MVC series which is heavilly involved with fan relations (to the point of holding tournaments with cash prizes) and is well aware of how much fans expect these Marvel staples to be in game.
  • Jaedenkaal
    Jaedenkaal Posts: 3,357 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Could be a timing thing, too. Contest of Champions could have acquired the license, or permission, or whatever, to use X-Men characters long ago, back when MPQ was also adding X-Men to the game.
  • Straycat
    Straycat Posts: 963 Critical Contributor
    edited September 2017
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    Most people know that for the movie rights Fox owns X-men, F4, and Deadpool, Sony owns Spiderman, and Disney owns the rest. This doesn't apply to games, although I wouldn't say they are completely unrelated. F4 characters were recently removed from sale on Marvel Heroes, the steam and now console mmo. Sony owns Spiderman and has a PS4 exclusive game coming out

    I think you might be putting too much stock into Contest of Champions. I am not very familiar with that game, but if it doesn't use variants, maybe they just need more characters so they use X-men. MPQ and Marvel vs Capcom are tying themselves much more towards the MCU, so they are excluding mutants.

    I don't know how the licenses work, but maybe they let the license expire so they can't add new X-men? I might be naive in thinking that they simply could add X-men if they wanted, but the higher ups just put priority on other characters.

    While I would like the devs to comment, Marvel has been silent on it for years, so I doubt we would get a real answer

  • Borstock
    Borstock Posts: 2,629 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Writers who have worked for Marvel have confirmed directives from the company to lessen the importance of characters not involved in the MCU. They've flat out told us that in interviews. 
  • Dormammu
    Dormammu Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Straycat said:
    Most people know Fox owns X-men, F4, and Deadpool, Sony owns Spiderman, and Disney owns the rest. 
    This is entirely inaccurate. Marvel owns all their characters. Fox and Sony licence exclusive rights for those characters to appear in Film and Television. Outside of Film and Television, Marvel can do whatever they want with their characters.
  • badsaj
    badsaj Posts: 73 Match Maker
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    The impression I get is Marvel doesn't want you to go see an X-Men movie, so they don't want to hype X-Men characters in other media. I was hoping that was changing, because they did revamp the whole X-Men comics line, with the X-men Gold, and Blue launch, but after what they did to the FF in the comics, who knows.
  • Straycat
    Straycat Posts: 963 Critical Contributor
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    Dormammu said:
    Straycat said:
    Most people know Fox owns X-men, F4, and Deadpool, Sony owns Spiderman, and Disney owns the rest. 
    This is entirely inaccurate. Marvel owns all their characters. Fox and Sony licence exclusive rights for those characters to appear in Film and Television. Outside of Film and Television, Marvel can do whatever they want with their characters.
    I was talking about the movie rights
  • Dormammu
    Dormammu Posts: 3,531 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Beer40 said:
    I don't think its out of place to ask for an official comment on this from @Brigby or another MPQ representative.
    Licensing deals are complicated and differ greatly. It's entirely possible Contest of Champions has a deal in place that allows them to use any and all Marvel characters (though certainly not exclusively) while Marvel Puzzle Quest has a more restricted licence or needs Marvel's approval to add a character.

    The terms of these deals are not going to be made public so expecting any sort of confirmation/comment here from Brigby or anyone else is not going to happen. All we can do is speculate.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 9,860 Chairperson of the Boards
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    It is also entirely possible that MPQ has managed to negotiate new characters from the X-universe but is bound from releasing any details due to Marvel's agreements with other companies for now. We tend to get blindsided by the Marvel angle and forget that the games developers are in competition with each other and right now even some level of exclusivity to these characters is a massive draw.
  • animaniactoo
    animaniactoo Posts: 486 Mover and Shaker
    edited September 2017
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    I've delved into this some as I've been curious about the cold war myself.

    From that I can tell you this piece of info: Marvel gets back the Movie/TV rights to any character who has not been used for 7 years. So they have very good reason to try to (at least temporarily) lessen the popularity of those characters.

    As a Disney licensee, I can tell you this piece of info: Contracts/Licenses are not perpetual. Renewals mean you gain some rights and lose some others, and contracts tend to be for no more than 2 or 3 years at a time. In the meantime, directives come down the pipe. Often stuff that's already through the approval process can continue (through to) production. If it's not already approved/in production, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to justify why it is necessary or makes monetary sense to do *this particular* thing. Some things are a hard no, hell no, no matter what, you are nuts and stop talking to me about this. Some things are a lot more squishy.

    I would GUESS. and this is ONLY a guess that the Deadpool movie was huge enough that profit-wise it would have been cutting their noses off to spite their faces not to allow merchandise to go forward since they get the merch profit. But it had to be over that line in order for them to waver from their stance of not doing merch licensing for properties they don't own the film/tv rights to.

    Mutants in general do not have the same cachet, even though we all like them and they're the core of why (I believe) most of us like and got into Marvel in the same place. They don't have the numbers to justify it against the long-range cold war strategy.
  • animaniactoo
    animaniactoo Posts: 486 Mover and Shaker
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    DAZ0273 said:
    It is also entirely possible that MPQ has managed to negotiate new characters from the X-universe but is bound from releasing any details due to Marvel's agreements with other companies for now. We tend to get blindsided by the Marvel angle and forget that the games developers are in competition with each other and right now even some level of exclusivity to these characters is a massive draw.
    You have no idea. I am currently in the process of creating a line for a particular retailer to be an exclusive look for one of the core properties and it has to look nothing like what's been out in the marketplace for the last 10 years. While still being undeniably, definably, that property. It's been a challenge and a half to find a direction for this one.

    If I just confused you, imagine trying to create a line of product for Iron Man without being able to use red, black, or gold as the base/primary colors.
  • Brigby
    Brigby ADMINISTRATORS Posts: 7,757 Site Admin
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    My apologies, but I'm afraid I don't have any communicable information to provide regarding this topic.
  • Beer40
    Beer40 Posts: 826 Critical Contributor
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    Brigby said:
    My apologies, but I'm afraid I don't have any communicable information to provide regarding this topic.
    Thank you for the response. If you would pass it along, and someone that does would be willing to share the info, it would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise, no worries, and thanks for responding!
  • thedarkphoenix
    thedarkphoenix Posts: 557 Critical Contributor
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    Brigby said:
    My apologies, but I'm afraid I don't have any communicable information to provide regarding this topic.
    lol Its cool

    Its clear that marvel has certain guide lines and characters they "would like" you to use and characters "they don't want you to use" and then there are those that they "have a strong input on"


    Not sure where the mutants fall with that but clearly something is up otherwise. We would have gotten at least one Xmen this year so far.
  • Pants1000
    Pants1000 Posts: 484 Mover and Shaker
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    I could be wrong, but my guess is there is just more incentive to use other characters.  It's clear there is a lot of cross-promotion between games, TV, movies, etc., so they lean toward characters where they can maximize that.  I think we'll eventually see more mutants if that's how people respond to the surveys.
  • PresidentDoom2020
    PresidentDoom2020 Posts: 180 Tile Toppler
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    I mean we did have mutants and the like in this year's character poll so it's not like there's a hard ban but obviously a company would rather push the stuff they own 100% rather than things that may have backdoors for some frivolous copyright lawsuit, no matter how small or absurd they might be. it sounds ridiculous, yes, but there's corporate lawyers who do nothing but scavenge for stuff like this
  • bluewolf
    bluewolf Posts: 5,501 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited September 2017
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    A guess:  if there is some directive against using X characters - that are nonetheless popular among fans - I would presume there would also be a directive saying "Don't say you can't use those characters." to licensees.  That's basically a no-win scenario (trying to explain why/deal with angry fans.)

    Also, re: Deadpool:  he and Wolverine are the two most recognizable X-characters. (Actually, Deadpool is not a mutant; not sure how that impacts things.). The X-men as a group are great, but have been most popular as a group.  So if another mutant was more popular, that might change their license status.

    From a cursory web search, it appears that CoC has variants, but less than MPQ.  There are also less overall characters than MPQ, I think.  Perhaps that impacts the addition of mutants.
  • Beer40
    Beer40 Posts: 826 Critical Contributor
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    As the OP, I just wanted everyone to know that I was using Contest of Champions as an example of a game adding Mutants, not a definitive comparison. Recently, I saw an ad on Facebook that advertised "The Age of Apocalypse" coming soon to either Contest of Champions or Marvel Future Fight. I couldn't remember which because I clicked out of the app too quickly and then it was gone, but did remember the X-Men recently being added to Contest of Champions, so I went with that as my example. 

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