NetEase had perfect timing when it released Marvel Rivals in December, taking a large chunk of players from Overwatch 2. It’s the nature of the beast when an online game has run its course and a new contender arrives to lure away its player base as when Marvel Rivals arrived. The superhero team-based 6v6 shooter quickly gave off Overwatch vibes when announced and while Blizzard’s second game was technically only two years old (early access opened in 2022, officially released in 2023), that was long enough for many to look elsewhere.
A newly released report on PC & Console gaming from NewZoo (via Insider Gaming) paints a picture showing that 45% of Overwatch 2’s players switched over when Marvel Rivals was released. Ironically, Blizzard had made a decision to reduce its P2P from 6v6 to 5v5 for its second installment and that combined with the immensely popular roster of Marvel characters was enough for the new game to attract players. It’s never a given with comic book-based IPs that a new title, be it online or singleplayer, will take off but Marvel Rivals appears to have hit a mark.
It’s still too early to decide about its long-term staying power or when another contender will arrive giving players a new horizon to cross over. According to Steam’s records, player count peaked at just over 644,000 at release and held averages between 100K and 200K for a while now. The report also indicates that the game was the 8th most played on Steam in 2024, which is a bit of an epic achievement given that it was released in the final month of the year.
Latest Update news:
On a more technical note, NetEase has released a new update featuring an experimental shader compilation mode to reduce in-game memory usage. The feature is said to help those whose PC has 16 GB or less system memory and can be activated from the game launcher. Players who continue to experience stuttering or crashes while using the experimental mode are encouraged to reach out to support for assistance.
- The shader compilation process will only run when first entering the game after a new game version or graphics driver update.
- Game memory usage is dramatically reduced, cutting down on severe FPS drops, frozen visuals, and crashes triggered by memory shortages.
Known Issues:
- In each new match, some materials might initially render abnormally for a few frames before returning to their usual state. Rest assured, rendering will behave normally for the remainder of the match.
- In each new match, you may encounter a slight stutter during the first rendering of certain materials, after which the frames stabilize into a smooth, continuous flow.
- On systems with a limited number of CPU threads (6 or fewer), enabling both the Switch Shader Compilation Mode and AMD FSR3 Frame Generation concurrently might induce additional stutters.