NetEase’s Marvel Rivals is one of the most popular hero shooters ever, going blow-to-blow with Blizzard’s Overwatch. While the game has done spectacularly well, even in its beta, the team were worried that the game would simply not catch on at launch.
Right now, Marvel has confirmed that Rivals will have its biggest year ever with larger updates, more heroes, and new game modes. This comes after the huge increase in scale that the game already saw during 2025.
Nevertheless, before launch, NetEase publishing and marketing lead Yachen Bian felt “panic” that the game would not launch well. Despite being based on the Marvel IP, Bian told GamesRadar that success was not guaranteed for the multiplayer game, although many would claim it was.
“After we launched the game, I think the team, we were just continuing to think of ways to make the game better,” they said, adding that the game’s “very strong community” allowed them to speed up the development of new content and embrace creators making their own content with the game.
Executive producer Danny Koo explained that making “live-service games are hard”. After all, we’ve just seen the release of Highguard, an incredibly expensive project that is shutting down tomorrow, just over a month after release.
Koo explained that Rivals’ biggest boon was “early testing” with players, suggesting that other developers “test often, get enough feedback, and address it.” Rivals had both closed alpha tests and open betas, both of which were very popular, and they helped shape up the game for release.
“Making sure that we position it well before we launch the game [was key], so we have a long year of conversation before we even attempted to launch the game,” Koo said.
As Marvel Rivals continues with free updates and events such as the returning Chrono-Rush, the game will soon be introducing another two heroes to the game. Additionally, a lack of the game’s upcoming Season 7 update patch notes show some major balance changes coming very, very soon.
