Marvel Rivals Launches With Nearly Half A Million Concurrent Players On Steam

Marvel Rivals has launched in Season 0, and NetEase and Marvel’s super hero shooter started strong.

As recorded on SteamDB, the game peaked at 444,286 players three hours after launch. To put this in context, when Helldivers 2 launched at the start of this year, it peaked at 458,709 players. And that happened two weeks after its launch.

The potential for Marvel Rivals to leapfrog Helldivers 2 in concurrent players, as well as sales and revenue, is huge, and could happen immediately. Helldivers 2 lost steam (pun unintended) since Sony locked the game out on Steam from the approximately 180 countries and regions that don’t have PSN. Going in for the kill, NetEase has spread Marvel Rivals’ reach as far as possible, bringing the game to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, and Epic Game Store.

There’s something poetic about this year starting and ending with a huge launch for a live service title. But there’s certainly a lot of other things that have happened this year that indicate that NetEase cannot afford to rest on their laurels.

As you already know, Sony shut down Concord after a record two weeks, and Ubisoft recently and shockingly announced plans to shut down XDefiant in a matter of months. Some fans may think that’s a good sign for Marvel Rivals, since there’s less competition. But one could also take this as a sign that hero shooters, and live service games, are already past Did Marvel act on the potential of making a hero shooter years too late?

From the onset, Marvel Rivals’ premise is undoubtedly compelling, and NetEase seems to have gone above and beyond to make it as enticing to fans as possible. One big choice that could put them above the likes of Overwatch 2 and Valorant is the decision to make all the playable heroes, recognizable Marvel characters from the comics and movies, completely free at launch.

Most recently they outlined the monetization model, which allows you to finish Battle Passes whenever you feel like it. But earlier on, they also revealed that they would not add any pay-to-win elements, with monetization revolving around cosmetics.

And say what you will, but they’ve made a compelling pitch for those cosmetics, with gamers already going wild over Psylocke’s ninja outfit (which is not the default costume, of course). But the real worry for NetEase here is not any single particular competitor, but the broader trends around the industry.

Helldivers 2, XDefiant, The Finals from last year, all these games had huge, promising launches. But those games were all doing really well, until they weren’t. As Newzoo reported last April, most gamers passed on GOTY titles from last year like Baldur’s Gate 3, in favor of games they have been playing for six years or older.

Those games include live service titles like Fortnite, Grand Theft Auto V, and Apex Legends, but the theory is that those games are occupying gamers in such a way that they aren’t trying new games anymore.

So the big question for NetEase is not, can they exceed these numbers in the next few weeks? What they really need to answer is, can they sustain Marvel Rivals for the next few years?

And with that, we would like to send our congratulations to NetEase on their early success for this game’s launch.