How Marvel Rivals did the impossible on launch day

Players tend to get worried when any studio announces they are working on a live service game, and understandably so. It's enough to have one quick look at many titles that have attempted and failed to break into that market to understand why. From other superhero projects such as Marvel's Avengers and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League all the way to games based on big properties such as Multiversus and XDefiant — they all eventually reach a breaking point. That can be due to many reasons such as low player count from day one, game-breaking bugs on release, or gamers feeling they are being cheated into spending too much money on a "free" product. And yet, against all odds, Marvel Rivals managed to do the impossible: have a (mostly) flawless release.

Marvel Rivals had a (mostly) flawless launch day

Even successful live-service games seem to be surrounded by some day-one controversy (let alone those that fail). Helldivers 2 is a perfect example since everybody wanted to jump on that bandwagon but the servers did not allow it. You had to queue for more than 30 minutes (up to almost an hour) if you wanted to play the game in the first weeks, and it was way worse if you wanted to play with friends in a squad. There are also the "Battlefront II scenarios" where complete gameplay mechanics are impossible to unlock unless you spend money in the game. With that in mind, it was extremely easy for Marvel Rivals to fall into any of these two categories, and yet that wasn't the case.

The problem with release days is developers don't know exactly how many players will give their game a chance. It would make no sense to spend a lot of resources on many servers if very few hop in and play, so the go-to tactic is to start small and scale it over time if necessary. However, Marvel Rivals was fully prepared to handle 444,286 concurrent players on Steam at launch and there have been no major reports of people being unable to join a match. That's even more surprising when you take into account that many also got the game on PlayStation and Xbox consoles, making that number even greater. Speaking of which, crossplay was available from the get-go, something that not even Fortnite managed to accomplish.

In the monetization department, Marvel Rivals is very consumer-friendly. The norm nowadays is for paid battle passes to expire as soon as the season ends, and if you didn't manage to claim all of its rewards then... well, I'm sorry to say but there are no more chances to do so. However, NetEase took a different approach by allowing us to complete the battle pass at our own pace with no time restrictions. Besides, players will only pay for cosmetics while all playable heroes and maps are completely free. That's the absolute best-case scenario, even if the studio risks fewer people spending money on their game since that's not required to get the full experience.

Players can instantly tell when a project is a simple cash grab or when it's made out of passion. Unfortunately, the former is very common to see, but Marvel Rivals was also the exception. NetEase underwent many alpha and beta tests to ensure the best possible experience on launch day. Besides, they listened to community feedback to balance out some characters, and even changed the design of some not-so-nice costumes (such as Spider-Man's). But the absolute best part? The game is actually fun.

If I wasn't writing this article right now, I would still be playing Marvel Rivals on a weekday at 2:00 am. The game is fun and engaging, and it has a lot of depth to it. All 33 characters control widely different, and attempting to master them all feels like a loss cause. In Marvel's Avengers, every member of Earth's Mightiest Heroes felt the same, which was a great disappointment given that there was no major advantage of playing as Hulk over Black Widow or vice-versa. But it couldn't be any more different here, and players definitely seem to enjoy it. (By the way; Iron Man is the best character. Change my mind.)

What felt like an impossible task became a reality. Marvel Rivals had a mostly flawless release without any major controversies, paywalls, or huge technical issues. The only reason it wasn't completely perfect is because there are still some minor problems. The game crashed on me once, some PC players seem to get a DirectX 12 error, and some textures can take a lot of time to load. However, that doesn't make it unplayable in the slightest. On the contrary, it's one of the smoothest releases we've had in quite a while for a live-service, multiplayer game, and it couldn't be more exciting. Fingers crossed it stands the test of time.