Marvel’s Avengers, the floundering superhero game from late 2020, has received a new update that has removed the ability to buy game-boosting consumables with real money.

Hero’s Catalysts and Fragment Extractors are the consumables in question. These items boost the rate of experience and the Fragment resource gain respectively. Fragments are used to buy items inside of the game and experience dictates much of how and what you play, so both of these resources are important to the functionality of the game.

In a statement, which you can read below, remorse is expressed by the original decision to have these paid options in the game and the ability to buy them.

We apologize for not responding sooner to your concerns about the addition of paid consumables in the Marketplace. We introduced them as an option for an evolving player base, and did not see them as pay-to-win since they don’t offer power directly. After considering your feedback, we have decided that by the end of today we will remove Hero’s Catalysts and Fragment Extractors for purchase. They will continue to be earnable rewards and those already owned are still usable.
We hope that this can be the first step in rebuilding your confidence in us as a team.
It continues to be our goal to make the very best game possible. Thank you for being a part of the Marvel’s Avengers community.

Now we did use the term “remorse” there but it’s worth remembering that these are big, faceless companies we are talking about. Marvel’s Avengers was developed by
Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montréal and Nixxes with publishing by Square Enix.

We really do stand by the phrase that “companies aren’t your friends” so take this apology and the removal of paid components with a grain of salt.

All of this is rather insulting to the playerbase when you consider the history of updates that this game has had. In March this year the game was updated to decrease the amount of experience that players could earn. At the time this was done to tackle “pacing issues” which was paper thin as is. Then the ability to buy paid boosters was added into the game last month.

It’s one of the most blatant cases of creating a problem and selling a solution that we’ve ever seen.

Anyone wishing to see why this game was still not great even without all these shenanigans, check out our launch review.

Marvel’s Avengers is available on Google Stadia, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. Those who want to try the game without paying for it, which is the best way to experience this game, can do so through Xbox Game Pass.

The announcement of the consumables being removed was made last night but they were actually only removed earlier today. Anyone playing the game now should not see them.