Magic to Master has arrived to Steam early access with a meager player headcount and scathing user reviews

March 31, 2025 11:00 AM

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We’d forgive our readers if they collectively agreed to purge Magic to Master from their memory, but we have a duty to report that, against all odds, the MMO that made headlines for multiple wrong reasons made its early access release this past weekend. And it’s going over about as well as followers of this game’s development likely expected.

The free-to-play MMO’s early access release (as PlayM2M) was initially pushed back from March 14th to March 28th to follow through on developer Laniatus’ promise of “uncompromising […] commitment to quality and excellence,” yet despite its stated efforts, the early access launch has been bombed with negative reviews on Steam, as players accuse the developer of running a Metin2 clone, claim it’s pay-to-win (and point out the game’s official affiliation with a keyseller and goldseller site), and complain about performance problems. To make matters worse, its player concurrency appears to already be heading to the floor after just a few days of life.

In case you have forgotten about this game, we’ll have a rundown of all of the headlines below, but its biggest headline came in 2023, when its dev team published fake glowing testimonials from multiple press outlets (including us) on its Kickstarter page. Other highlights include a crypto version of the MMO that doesn’t appear to be the one offered on Steam (its publisher is Horlandor Ltd., not MetaEngine), accusations by Gameforge that it stole Metin2 assets, and confusion over who its actual owners are.