Last updated on October 17, 2025
Mystic Confluence | Illustration by Mike Zeck & John Beatty
Hmm… maybe it was my fault Spider-Man sucked, after all. It wasn't immediately apparent, but a very targeted question on WotC's latest survey seems to suggest Magic influencers are responsible, at least in some part, for the poor performance of Marvel's Spider-Man. Forget all that riff-raff about repurposing a small set into something salvageable, filling it with a bunch of on-the-nose references to New York City, selling it at an inflated price point, and making a sideshow mockery of the set for digital platforms. Nope, couldn't be any of that, the set almost certainly flopped because your favorite MTG personality told you not to like it.
Survey Says…
So here's the question that's got everyone in a tizzy, coming from WotC's latest round of questioning about its latest sets and the company as a whole.
First off, putting the finger-pointing aside for just a moment, this is WotC blatantly saying Marvel's Spider-Man didn't do well. The question specifically asks about negative commentary, when it could have instead left “negative” out and not told on itself. That's not really a surprise, since it's sort of well-known at this point that Spider-Man wasn't the next coming of Final Fantasy, it's just not that often that WotC just takes the L and posts it for everyone to see.
But then there's the implications of what this question is really asking. Sure, they want to know if negative word-of-mouth caused people to shy away from the set, but why do they want to know that? It sounds like they just want a narrative they can fall back on for why the set flopped, and they're aware that MTG podcasters and YouTubers have been generally down on the set. For example, well-established Limited podcast Limited Resources basically put their foot down for the first time in 823 episodes and said they weren't interested in talking about Spider-Man/Through the Omenpaths.
That's certainly a big deal, and probably something WotC wants to know about, but the only reason you'd ask this survey question is if you're searching for a scapegoat of sorts to blame the poor sales or reception on. To be fair, we don't even know if SPM was a financial bomb or not, but it's not too far off to think it is based on how the community has received it.
Notably, this survey follows up a similar question from the Edge of Eternities survey a few months back, which asked players to cite the MTG influencers they regularly listen to (also included in this survey). It definitely feels like playing the blame game instead of pointing the finger internally at what was essentially a botched, poorly constructed product.
What's more, some survey takers weren't even asked this question, or as WotC puts it, weren't part of the “targeted group”, whatever that means. This comes from the same survey that had such bangers as “I have more money to spend on cards” and “Is Alchemy a Mistake?” At the very least, these questions show that WotC's aware of certain recent criticisms, but it's definitely a suspicious way to go about getting feedback.
Community Reaction
Needless to say, people aren't happy about the underlying accusations here.
Luis Scott-Vargas, cohost of Limited Resources, replied with a simple “I'm in Danger” meme, alluding to the fact that this feels like some sort of WotC witch hunt to punish influencers who had anything negative to say about Spider-Man. “This is distasteful,” writes @tronisbad, simply posting the same pic of the survey question.
In addition to the concerns people have with the influencer question, Twitter/X also lit up blue with people posting images of the “target group” message, or error messages indicating that Wizards of the Coast took down the survey, likely due to the negative attention it was getting on social media (it has since been restored). To be fair, the targeted group question was probably skipped over for anyone who previously said in the survey that they didn't engage with any influencers about the set prior to its release, but it's still a pretty pointed question to ask, period, even if it was only asked to some people.
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3 Comments
The possible answers to this question are also either revealingly or perhaps even sneakily arranged.
The question asks “to what degree” Magic players feel they were (negatively) influenced by Magic influencers. Ordinarily the furthest option to one side, say the farthest point to the left, would mean “to the least degree”; and the furthest option to the other side, say the right, would mean “to the highest degree”; and the point between them would be neutrality.
But here, this survey has set the point farthest left as “negatively influenced” and the point furthest right as “positively influenced”. Therefore there is no neutral. The point farthest left is “negatively influenced”; the point farthest right is “positively influenced”; and so the between these is what, “influenced”?
This means that some Magic Players – and this was my case – who might want to disagree with the idea that they were influenced by Magic influencers entirely cannot do so.
It would be better if the options were not labelled “1,2,3,4,5” (where there is no point of “0” influence) but “-2,-1,0,+1,+2” (where there is at least a point of no influence).
They are assuming that one has been influenced, and that one must pick whether that has been negative influence or positive.
And the problem I have with this is that one might think – as I thought – that to answer a question of the “degree” to which one was influenced and say “I don’t think I was influenced by Magic influencers, I analysed the situation myself and thought it was messy and bad all on my own”, one should pick 1 (because that is 1 out of 5 and so the least possible agreement out of the fullest possible extent). But to select 1 here is to say “I was negatively influenced.
I might be wrong, but I believe selecting a 3 on this scale pops up a message that says “neither positively nor negatively influenced” so it’s supposed to be the neutral point.
Didn’t try it on this exact question so it might not be the case here, but that’s how it’s set up on most 1-5 questions.
Whomever WotC is using to study customer sentiment should find a new line of work.
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