Summary
Magic: The Gatheringplayers really aren’t happy about the recent announcement regarding the crossover-laden direction of Universes Beyond and its legality in Standard play.
2024 has been a massive year for Magic: The Gatheringalready thanks to sets likeAssassin’s Creed, Bloomburrow, Fallout, and more, but arguably its biggest moment came just a few days ago. During the most recent yearly event,Wizards of the Coast announced “the next era” of MTG, which includes some big crossovers through Universes Beyond and Secret Lair, and some massive rule changes.
While MTG’s move towards more crossover sets has always been a bit controversial with fans,the announcement of a SpongeBob SquarePants Secret Lairand theconfirmation that Universes Beyond will now be Standard-legalseems to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. As anticipated, a lot of fans really aren’t happy about all of the changes being made in 2025.
MTG Fans Aren’t Happy With “Horrific” Universes Beyond Direction
Beyond SpongeBob bloody SquarePants of all characters being added to MTG, the biggest announcement made was thatUniverses Beyond will now be legal in Standard and make up for 50 percent of MTG sets per year. What this basically means is that the crossover sets will now be playable in the most important “premiere” format and become basically unavoidable in Standard play.
Over on the MTG subreddit, fans have been reacting about as well as you’d expect to the deccision.One post from Redditor Daaiiimon reflects on a quote from three years agothat promised fans that Universes Beyond cards won’t be made Standard legal and were just a “cool thing” that WotC was doing in addition to the normal sets - that clearly isn’t the case anymore and those who don’t like UB can no longer avoid it.
The comments replying to that post are all similarly negative about the direction that Universes Beyond and MTG are going in, with many pointing out that the move to standard and increased presence is just because of how much money they make.Another popular post discussing Universes Beyond becoming Standard-legalalso has a ton of negative feedback from fans calling it a “slippery slope”.
2.5 decades of lore and world building…what a waste. Now Ugin gets to face off against Spiderman. Dark times ahead.
The outrage goes beyond Reddit too,as the replies to the official MTG Twitter account’s announcement of the big change are also similarly negative, with some fans saying they won’t buy another set and are “done” with the game as a whole. MTG has made some controversial decisions in the past, but the new direction and focus on Universes Beyond might be its biggest yet.
