Marvel Rivals Is Truly Unstoppable As It Tops 20 Million Players

"it’s worth remembering the muted critical reception and poor commercial performance of the likes of Marvel’s Avengers and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League"

They were also full priced games and not free to play, as well as being more along the lines of single player style games with live service elements shoved in, as opposed to an arena based hero shooter

Knew all along it would be big and the Devs have been making all the right moves as well.

Marvel Rival has 0 barrier to entry in its free to play model. People can just jump in and out of the game to play a quick match with no risk.

Add that to the powerhouse that is the Marvel brand, you'll get this winning story.

The game is actually so much chaotic fun that I haven't had the joy of playing in a while. I don't really care about the competitive aspect and ranked match, but rotating my favourite heroes and listening to their banters before the match begins actually gave me joy.

And that's what video games are supposed to do, isn't it?

Installed this, played for 40 minutes, uninstalled it and deleted it. Utterly not for me ha ha. Too chaotic and hectic. Think im way too old now lol. It is literally Overwatch with Marvel skins ( but not as good )

I'm not sure what reason there was to type the last paragraph?

This game was from the start advertised as a live service multi player game.

You know exactly what your getting with marvel rivals and that's why it is a success.

The 2 games you mentioned were full priced games which had single player parts to the game and shoe horned in live service elements.

Avengers, a very short but great single player game, which was advertised that way, but then the live service part was so lack luster and shoe horned in elements which just don't belong in that type of game, by armour and shields and have to level up your hero?
Just no and thr missions were so boring and repetitive.

Suicide Squad full priced game, coming from the legends of single player super hero games, to then throw you into a multi player world where you just shoot purple blobs, with lack luster boss fights.

Both games advertised single player elements so both games were deceiving it's core audiences.

Marvel rivals a free to play live service fight each other as your favourite heroes or villains.
It's exactly what it says it is.

Not developed by developers who are primarily work on great single player games to begin with.

It has about 10 times more players than Overwatch 2 on Steam at the moment.

Let's see how many of those 20 million people stay with the game in the upcoming months.How many of them are willing to abandon their live service game(Fortnite,Cod, Overwatch) in favour of Marvel Rivals.

Interesting. I played one round and found it sluggish and boring. Felt “cheap” to me.

didnt overwatch sell 50 million copies

A lot of people are salty this game is successful because it proved their narrative wrong about multiplayer games.

I'll give it a go. Hopefully it's success will lead to a marvel heroes resurgence. That game was fun. Was d4 before d4

@Bez87 what hurt avengers was the actual combat. And it tried to be too much like destiny. A marvel game doesn't need to rely on loot. The fun is the characters.

If my xbox one was able to play it I would have joined in.

But how will this affect Concord's sales????

This article reads pretty defensively, and has instances of confirmation bias.

This is great for Rivals, but its success says about as much about the viability of F2P multiplayer games as the MCU did about cinematic universes. I.e., nothing much except it can be successful.

I still just thought Rivals was kinda boring; too similar to Overwatch yet not as polished, just making me want to play Overwatch instead. I get people have fallen off OW. But as someone who still enjoys it, Rivals really doesn't offer me much.

EDIT: I also don't know who ever said F2P live-service games were dead. That would completely ignore the continued success of Fortnite, ZZZ, and even Overwatch. I'm sure many, like me, we're saying the market for them was shrinking, making it a less viable business move. Ergo, the proposition was that most future games if that ilk would fail, and that's been correct. Rivals and Nikki don't erase the failures of Concord, xDefiant, Multiverses, Foamstars,etc.

Sammy just name dropping Infinity Nikki into the article w/o further comment is peak Sammy. 👍

Full disclosure: I'm playing Nikki but not Rivals as I'm still playing Fortnite w/ all of my free Marvel skins.😂

@RoomWithaMoose you could say that about traditional games also but nobody ever does.

When a game like rebirth or Alan wake underperforms, nobody ever says making games like that is less viable.

It really is a well-made game. It feels great to play, the character design is spot-on, and the level design is engaging and invites strategic planning. The sheer number of characters and the depth of those character is really staggering. And having lightning-fast matchmaking and almost zero networking issues makes the game a joy to play. I'm almost willing to pay for a skin as a thank-you to the devs for their hard work.

I've played around with the characters in the practice range but haven't played a match yet, but I'm glad the game is successful. It really reminds me of 2016 Overwatch.

@Shad361 I mean, you can say that about literally any market. That doesn't mean one flooded with failures isn't indicative of its folly.

Like I said, I'm not saying the market is dying. I'm just saying it's not the instant success all companies were assuming it was 2 years ago.

Poor old concord must be wondering what could have been…

It’s a slam dunk. The market isn’t dead, it’s just totally shrunk and incredibly unwelcoming to newcomers. This is a good game though, my gripes can easily be sorted with balance patches as the core game is solid.

I'm too old for these type of games.

The power of a good characters in hero shooter, I'm actually surprised the characters model are good for a western games, the male are buff as heck (like the punisher) and the female are surprisingly cute (like all of them). Until I find out the game is made by chinese developer (net ease) 😅

Yeah if western AAA game developer still want to make concord like characters in games, chinese devs with eat them alive in sales, the only exception are cod, fortnite and sport games.

@Cutmastavictory that's exactly what i was trying to get at. Loot and gear which up'd your level. They should of done a true co op single player game.

Instead of what ever that online part was