MultiVersus was July's biggest-selling game, ousting Elden Ring from the top spot

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From Software's RPG still leads for the year, however.

Jake the Dog from Adventure Time
(Image credit: Player First Games)

Warner Bros' character brawler MultiVersus has taken the industry by storm since it arrived in open beta last month. But the scale of its popularity was recently confirmed by analytics group NPD, which reported that Multiversus was the top-selling video game of last month, despite only landing on Steam on the 19th.

MultiVersus is a free-to-play game, but alongside in-game microtransactions, Warner Bros also sells an array of Founders Packs for the game, which give players "character tickets" used for unlocking fighters. It was these Founders Packs which apparently launched MultiVersus to the top of the sales charts.

There's one important caveat to these rankings. While NPD's chart takes into account both physical and digital sales for most games, digital sales are not registered for the two Nintendo titles on the list, namely Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and the eternally popular Mario Kart 8, placed at fourth and seventh on the list. It also doesn't track Xbox and Digital sales for MLB: The Show 22, which ranks sixth.

In any case, it's impressive stuff from developer Player First Games, although having every single character from everybody's childhood available to play as has probably helped MultiVersus gain traction. Nonetheless, it's is an undeniably solid brawler too. In her recent review, Mollie said "MultiVersus has done a bang-up job of laying the foundations for a fantastic platform fighter that has the potential to blossom into something amazing".

Rick Lane
Contributor

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.