Forget Concord, this One Punch Man game was my biggest disappointment of 2024

Licensed games have always gotten a bad rep. But, as a poor kid growing up in the early 2000s, bargain bin licensed games were my entrance into the world of gaming. While my peers were playing Zelda and CoD, I was playing Madagascar and Scooby Doo Mystery Mayhem on PS2 for the hundredth time.

Needless to say, I have a soft spot for the licensed games of that era – but there are some that just don’t deserve defending. Unfortunately, to the disappointment of anime fans like me, a lot of licensed anime games fall into this category, especially on mobile.

It’s become a bit of a joke these days. You see a gacha game based on a licensed anime, you know it’s probably going to be an incredibly basic idle affair with equally as basic gameplay mechanics, egregious microtransactions with forced change, and all of your favorite characters are going to be locked behind limited-time banners with terrible rates. No IP is safe from these, from Tokyo Ghoul to My Hero Academia.

Alternatively, if an anime game manages to escape the greedy gacha gods weaponizing the popularity of the IP, it’s likely to be another basic re-skinned fighting game. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the occasional fighting game – but it does get boring after a while, doesn’t it? Some of these can be pretty stinky, too. I’ve tried with all my might to wipe 2024’s Jujutsu Kaisen Cursed Clash from my mind. Gojo deserves so much more.

That’s why, when I got the opportunity to do my One Punch Man: World preview, I was pleasantly surprised by just how much fun I had during the beta, and I found myself approaching its release with cautious optimism. Unfortunately, my caution wasn’t enough, and my optimism was misplaced.

One Punch Man: World is an ARPG set in the world of, you guessed it, One Punch Man. The narrative parallels that of the first season of the anime, while also carving out some of its own story beats, primarily focusing on Lightning Max and a handful of his hero pals following on shortly after a devastating attack on City A.

While the story and dialog were a little flawed at times, I was pretty impressed with the attention to detail and faithfulness to the source material, and the visuals, combat, and overall gameplay were genuinely fun. In fact, during my preview back in 2023, I stated it’s “the closest a game has ever gotten to capturing that classic One Punch Man charm.”

Plus, having been a fan of the anime for quite some time, it was genuinely exciting to play as my favorite characters as I ran around a beautifully rendered, bustling city, beating up memorable bad guys from the show and helping little old ladies. But, of course, One Punch Man: World is also a gacha game, meaning all those aforementioned characters are locked behind banners, RNG rates, and a variety of different currencies – some of which you need to splash real cash on.

Now, I want to highlight that, while I’m not particularly fond of the predatory nature of gacha mechanics, some of my favorite games of all time are gachas. I’ve spent more hours than I can count in Genshin Impact, I stayed up all night to see the launches of both Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero, and Infinity Nikki was my top mobile game of the year in 2024. However, there’s a right way and a wrong way to implement gacha mechanics in your game, and One Punch Man World did it very, very wrong.

The first massive misstep that One Punch Man: World made on launch was the beginner’s banner. If you’re familiar with other gacha games, you’ve likely seen your fair share of beginner’s banners in the past. Generally, they offer some kind of discount, such as ten pulls for the price of eight – and most of the time you can scrounge up enough currency through early-game quests and rewards to do a couple of ten-pulls. It may sound generous, but it’s actually a pretty clever tactic. After all, a player is more likely to stick around if they have at least one powerful character early in the game, and freebies build up a sense of good will among players, making them more likely to splash their own cash if they’re already having fun.

OPM: World’s beginners banner, on the other hand, was an absolute catastrophe. Initially, it looked pretty good – you could perform ten ten-pulls for free, then select which ten-pull you want to keep. While this doesn’t give you as many items as other beginner’s banners usually do, the option to choose your favorite ten-pull gives you some control that’s often lacking in gacha. You might also score a lucky ten pull with multiple characters, which could create a nice foundation for your account, which, in turn, keeps you invested in the game.

However, it soon became apparent that, while you can ‘perform’ those ten pulls on the Starter Selection Draw beginner’s banner, you can’t actually claim your chosen ten-pull without spending 260 gold. “How do you earn gold?” I hear you ask. Well, you don’t – it’s primarily a premium currency similar to Genshin’s genesis crystals, and in order to get 260 gold, you have no choice but to spend around $50.

That’s right. $50 for ten items from the beginner’s banner, several of which are likely to be equipment for characters you don’t even own, and all of which are available on the standard banner. The beginner’s banner is also time-limited, and is only available for a set period after you unlock the draw system. After that, it’s gone for good.

This immediately caused uproar in the playerbase, killing a lot of good faith. Many players flocked to social media to criticize this mechanic, even replying to official One Punch Man: World posts to complain (to no response, of course). For a couple of examples, you can check out these tweets from users @legendsuck, @AsumaAouDeus, and @RoKage6. Meanwhile, over on Reddit, a now-deleted user posted “New game, One Punch Man: World has a $60 paid reroll banner” to r/gachagaming, sparking little surprise in the comments.

But that was just the beginning of the downfall. As highlighted in this tweet by @MightyWeakY, on launch the store listed an SSR Character Pack as ‘on sale’ for 90% off. The sale price? $99.99. Yes, this suggests that a single SSR character from the standard banner is ‘worth’ $999.90. But don’t worry – the SSR Character Pack comes with 648 gold, too! That’s enough to purchase that ten pull from the beginner’s banner, and you’ll still have some gold left over!

Of course, even OPM: World would never actually list the SSR Character Pack for $999.90 – it’s the age-old tactic of inflating a price to make the ‘sale’ price look like a better deal. But honestly, this one’s just ridiculous. Even without the clearly fake ‘discount’, charging $100 for a single, standard banner character (not even a limited one) and a handful of virtual currency is far from value for money, and, in combination with the beginner’s banner fiasco, it certainly put a bad taste in everyone’s mouth during the most important part of the game’s life cycle.

Naturally, very few players were tempted by the SSR Character Pack or the beginner’s banner, but what about other items in the shop? Well, that didn’t go to plan either. Of course, just about every mobile game has microtransactions coming out of its ears – that’s how they work, after all – and the prices shown in OPM: World aren’t far from what we’ve seen in other gacha games. However, it’s the lack of value for money that truly pushed players to shut their wallets, even if they initially went in with the intent to spend.

In a post on the official r/OnePunchManWorldGame subreddit, u/Skeltalmans said “For me personally, what killed it was insane prices for 0 return.” This seems to be a common theme across social media circles discussing this game. In another insightful post on the subreddit entitled “Why OPM: World failed”, u/diglanime states “The problem with OPM: World’s monetization is that there wasn’t much of a point buying anything in the game. Almost everything was bad value, overpriced, and tedious. […] Not much to buy, not much of a reason to spend, which surprisingly kinda leads people to not want to spend.”

OPM: World tried to fix this around two months after launch by introducing a $1 purchase, and the Welkin-style monthly purchase that drip feeds you a set amount of silver per day definitely lured at least a few players to splash a couple of dollars, but at this point the damage was done. And, of course, the perceived greed of the monetization practices combined with the severe lack of freebies to hook you in had already ruined any good will that may have coaxed most of the playerbase into spending.

There were no memorable events, very limited quest rewards, and barely any One Punch Man: World codes popping up, while other gachas continued to throw log-in events, free characters, and heaps of fun festivities at us. In fact, in a Reddit post discussing what 250 pulls gets in you in the game, u/pedanticProgramer highlighted “in ZZZ I have already accumulated more pulls in two months of launch than I was able to manage in six months of OPM […] All in all this game had a lot of potential, and I’m sad to see its state.”

The other reoccurring issue discussed among players is that there’s nothing to do in the game. It doesn’t take long to get through the main content, then you’re stuck in a cycle of repetitive, boring tasks where your only goal is obtaining heroes and upgrading them – but for what? To fight the same mobs you fought at level one? Even whales turn away from a game if there are no challenges where they can show off their extremely expensive roster of characters.

With all this in mind, it soon became evident that the game was a financial flop. Over the first three months following the global launch, One Punch Man: World’s revenue went into freefall, with it earning $1.3m in February 2024 (the first month after its January 31 release), $270k in March, and just $92k in April. As far as we know, this data only covers Android and iOS revenue in certain regions, so adding in PC earnings may well push those numbers up quite a bit. But, despite not knowing an exact budget for the game, a 2023 interview with PocketGamer.biz revealed that One Punch Man: World was in development for five years (starting in 2019) and, even with the pandemic causing a lot of delays, it’s pretty safe to say that the cost of development over that time far exceeds the revenue earned in the first few months after release.

In a Reddit post addressing this revenue disaster, u/ZFGod states that “the title ‘One Punch Man’ has so many fans around the globe and the company could have made a decent amount of money if they’d have actually been more pro-active in the community, [adding] roadmaps and small events every week or so”. After all, “having a ‘limited’ banner does not count as an event”. In response, user u/AnalysisSmooth commented “this is possibly the WORST fumbled bag ever in gacha history. The easiest slam dunk of a product botched” – and, unfortunately, it’s hard to disagree.

These days, if you search One Punch Man: World on Sensor Tower the revenue is looking even more bleak, with numbers sitting at less than $5k across the board. For comparison’s sake, this post showing the top 50 games in the gacha revenue monthly report shows Love and Deepspace at number one, raking in $75.4mil throughout December 2024, while BanG Dream!! Girls Band Party! pulls up the rear at number 50, earning a total of $1.75mil. In short, less than a year after release, One Punch Man: World is barely pulling in enough cash to keep the lights on.

And it’s no wonder why. Many early players were scared away by the game’s terrible launch, but even those who stuck around began to abandon ship due to a severe lack of content in the following months – and it only got worse from there. The last One Punch Man: World update went live on June 7, 2024. At the time of writing, that’s just over seven months ago. In that time, there have been six major Genshin Impact updates, including the release of the brand-new nation of Natlan. We’ve also seen five Honkai Star Rail updates since then, as well as the release of Zenless Zone Zero, which has seen four updates of its own.

While it may seem unfair to compare One Punch Man: World to massive games like Genshin Impact, the hard truth is that all of these games are competing in the same space, and are each fighting for a slice of our time and hard-earned money. But even if I compare it to a game closer to its standing, the outlook is pretty miserable. Solo Leveling: Arise, another licensed game based on an iconic web novel and webtoon series, launched globally on May 8, 2024. While it certainly has its flaws, it’s seen massive success since its release, pushing Netmarble’s 2024 profits past the $1bn mark during Q2.

There’s no denying that Solo Leveling: Arise’s monetization system is even more pushy and predatory than OPM: World’s, which certainly helped it secure all that cash, but there are other factors at play, too. The game sees frequent updates, engaging (albeit simple) events that pop up often, fresh content and characters to pull players in, and a cleverly-developed progression system that toes the line between frustrating and satisfying. Unfortunately, these are all elements that OPM: World lacks.

Now, recently a message from the official SEA Discord has revealed that the developers are “preparing something new”. The developer message explains that it was originally supposed to be revealed in December, but it had to be delayed “for some reason”. However, the devs claim to still be working on it, and “if everything goes well there will be an update in January”. Currently, the only thing we know about this update is that it will introduce a new battle mode.

There have been rumors about a ‘big update’ floating around for months now, and the remaining players are hoping that this will be it. But, as much as I’d love to see the One Punch Man: World that I dreamed about, with the current trajectory of the game, I don’t think there’s anything that the developers could do to patch up this ship – at this point, it’s almost entirely underwater.

I mean, let’s face it, even if this new update doubled the game’s content, covered the entirety of the second season of the anime, offered an entire free roster of characters, and gave every player a back massage, there’s truly no saving OPM: World at this point. And honestly, I’m not even mad anymore. I’m not surprised. I’m just disappointed.

Sadly, it looks like we anime fans have to come to terms with the fact that Fortnite is the best licensed anime game we’re gonna get for the time being – followed closely by the many fan-made Roblox games that somehow manage to do a better job than these giant studios. But, while I’ll continue to dream of a game that successfully manages to bring one of our favorite animes to life, at least we have plenty of brilliant, anime-style mobile RPGs like Genshin, HSR, and ZZZ to keep us entertained. Hoyo’s tagline of ‘tech otakus save the world’ is starting to make sense, huh?

So, if you want to grab some freebies for a game that manages to succeed in every way that One Punch Man: World failed, be sure to check out our Genshin Impact codes, Honkai Star Rail codes, and Zenless Zone Zero codes. You might just be able to nab a character without spending $50-100 if you do.