MTG Survey on Spider-Man Backlash Reveals a Controversial Catch: The ‘Influencer Question’

Wizards of the Coast (WotC), the publisher of Magic: The Gathering (MTG), has initiated a new player survey to gather feedback on the controversial Universes Beyond set, Magic: The Gathering | Marvel’s Spider-Man. While the move appears to be a direct attempt to address the significant community backlash against the set’s design, complexity, and theme, a specific line of questioning in the survey has ignited a new firestorm of controversy.

The catch is a prompt that the community is interpreting as an attempt to shift blame for the set’s poor reception away from WotC and onto content creators and influencers.

The Controversial Question: Blaming the Messengers?

Players who indicated that they receive their MTG news and opinions from online content creators are being presented with a highly specific, and to many, inflammatory question. This question asks participants to:

“To what degree did negative influencer commentary impact your perceptions of Magic: The Gathering | Marvel’s Spider-Man before the set released?”

The accompanying scale runs from 1 to 5, where ‘1’ means “Greatly worsened my perception” and ‘5’ means “Greatly improved my perception.”

This line of inquiry has prompted a furious response from both players and the content creators themselves, many of whom have already been vocal critics of the set’s perceived low design quality, repetitive card mechanics, and the controversial “Pick-Two Draft” format. The sentiment is that WotC is attempting a “witch hunt” or engaging in an act of deflection by suggesting that player opinion was primarily shaped by negativity from external sources, rather than the intrinsic quality of the product.

The Community’s Reaction: Deflection vs. Data Collection

• Content Creator Alarm: Professional MTG players and Hall of Famers, such as Luis Scott-Vargas (LSV), publicly condemned the question, with many expressing concern that WotC is looking to create an internal “hit list” of critical voices for potential future retaliation (e.g., restricting card previews or access).
• The ‘Lazy Design’ Critique: The most common player complaint about the set—as detailed in various survey answers—was that the set was “lazy,” with a reliance on reused and slightly rebranded mechanics like “Connive” and “Modified” instead of introducing unique, cohesive gameplay that fit the Spider-Man theme.
• Filtering and Quotas: Anecdotal reports from players suggested that those who selected “I am not familiar with the set” or gave aggressively negative overall feedback were sometimes filtered out with a polite message, leading to speculation that WotC was attempting to curate results to meet quotas for specific demographics or positive sentiment.

The Larger Context: Universes Beyond Fatigue

The backlash surrounding the Spider-Man set is part of a broader, ongoing community debate about the accelerated schedule and increasing volume of the Universes Beyond line, which introduces characters from non-MTG IPs (like The Lord of the Rings and the upcoming Marvel Super Heroes and Star Trek sets for 2026) into the game. The core concern is that the frequent crossovers are:**

1. Eroding MTG’s Core Identity: Saturating the lore with outside characters.
2. Driving Power Creep: Forcing the inclusion of “busted” cards in UB sets to guarantee sales, which unbalances traditional formats like Commander and Modern.

By focusing the survey on the impact of negative commentary, WotC is viewed by critics as ignoring the fundamental questions about product quality, set size, and the long-term health of the game’s various formats.