If I had a nickel for every time a recently-released live service third-person shooter gained hundreds of thousands of players at the start of the year, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice. As the headline suggests, Marvel Rivals is doing very well for itself—garnering a whopping 644,269 players on Steam at its all-time high as of January 11.
That, as per SteamDB's leaderboards, puts it at a downright respectful number 14 at the time of writing, placing it below other such videogame giants as Baldur's Gate 3 (which had around 40.6% more players at its peak) and above heavy hitters like Path of Exile 2, Valheim, and Helldivers 2.
That's more than enough to be classified as a phenomenon, considering Arrowhead's flagship shooter pulled in 458,700 bug-shooting super patriots at launch. And that's not taking into account its players on other platforms such as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
As to why? Well, Season 1's here, for starters. And it's free, obviously—which is bound to account for a lot of the 'eh, screw it, let's give it a shot' crowd. Of which I am one, to be fair. I'd never have typically tried something like Marvel Rivals for a premium, but its zany overpowered nonsense has absolutely hooked me. Even our own Fraser Brown, who was initially down on the game, came around on it in time for Christmas.
But there's also the fact that NetEase has put together something that's just downright solid and a good bit of fun, marrying that competence up with recognisable characters. Let's face it, the star power of Marvel is a huge power up to any marketing efforts. Everyone wants to get a teamwipe as their favourite hero, and you get to enjoy learning more about the comics, too—in other words, players are coming for Spider-Man, and staying for Jeff the Land Shark. Sure, the monetisation ain't great, but it's also cosmetics only, so you can just sort of close your eyes and ignore it.
Whether it keeps the momentum of its opening web swing is another thing entirely. 2024 was not a great year for live service shooters, making Marvel Rivals a notable outlier among its newcomer brethren. X-Defiant, Concord, and Suicide Squad all launched and flopped—I'd even given up hope that a new kid on the block could even make a dent.
Well, I'm eating humble pie now. Both because I was wrong, and because I keep getting my ass kicked when I dive into the backline as Spider-Man, along with everyone else. At least its developers are staying humble, too, with its game director admitting that there's really no basic formula to success: "It's really hard to tell ahead of time." That makes me feel better about my faltering powers of prophecy, at least.
