In Multiverse fighting game, Velma will no longer be able to call police as special move

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The MultiVersus (opens in new tab) patch that went live yesterday, taking the game to version 1.02, makes a number of big and small changes to the game, and one that's particularly interesting because it's so seemingly odd: Velma, the big brain of the Scooby Gang, will no longer call the police after solving a mystery.

Velma's passive in MultiVersus enables her to generate "evidence" when she lands attacks that she can pick up during a fight. Once she's accumulated enough, she can call the police, who will come rolling in and "arrest" the opposing player. It's her ultimate ability, basically, a splashy payoff that can guarantee a kill if an enemy team does nothing. It looks like this:

As of yesterday, however, that's no longer the case. As described in the 1.02 patch notes (opens in new tab), "Instead of calling the police, Velma now solves the mystery and calls the Mystery Inc. gang and the Mystery Machine to take the bad guys away."

No reason for the change was given, but it's fair to say that the image of Velma calling the cops on her opponents—under false pretenses, no less, because she tells them it's actually Old Man Jenkins—is at the very least uncomfortable at a time when police abuses and criminality, amidst almost complete impunity from consequences, are coming under increasing public scrutiny. This is especially so when she's facing Black men like, say, Lebron James, which bears many similarities to real-world incidents.

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