If I had a nickel for each time a recently-released stay service third-person shooter gained a whole lot of 1000’s of gamers firstly of the yr, I’d have two nickels. Which is not loads, however it’s bizarre that it is occurred twice. As the headline suggests, Marvel Rivals is doing very effectively for itself—garnering a whopping 644,269 gamers on Steam at its all-time excessive as of January 11.
That, as per SteamDB’s leaderboards, places it at a downright respectful quantity 14 on the time of writing, inserting it under different such videogame giants as Baldur’s Gate 3 (which had round 40.6% extra gamers at its peak) and above heavy hitters like Path of Exile 2, Valheim, and Helldivers 2.
That’s greater than sufficient to be categorised as a phenomenon, contemplating Arrowhead’s flagship shooter pulled in 458,700 bug-shooting tremendous patriots at launch. And that is not bearing in mind its gamers on different platforms reminiscent of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
As to why? Well, Season 1’s right here, for starters. And it is free, clearly—which is certain to account for lots of the ‘eh, screw it, let’s give it a shot’ crowd. Of which I’m one, to be honest. I’d by no means have sometimes tried one thing like Marvel Rivals for a premium, however its zany overpowered nonsense has completely hooked me. Even our personal Fraser Brown, who was initially down on the sport, got here round on it in time for Christmas.
But there’s additionally the truth that NetEase has put collectively one thing that is simply downright strong and a very good little bit of enjoyable, marrying that competence up with recognisable characters. Let’s face it, the star energy of Marvel is a large energy as much as any advertising and marketing efforts. Everyone desires to get a teamwipe as their favorite hero, and also you get to take pleasure in studying extra in regards to the comics, too—in different phrases, gamers are coming for Spider-Man, and staying for Jeff the Land Shark. Sure, the monetisation ain’t nice, however it’s additionally cosmetics solely, so you possibly can simply form of shut your eyes and ignore it.
Whether it retains the momentum of its opening net swing is one other factor fully. 2024 was not an important yr for stay service shooters, making Marvel Rivals a notable outlier amongst its newcomer brethren. X-Defiant, Concord, and Suicide Squad all launched and flopped—I’d even given up hope {that a} new child on the block may even make a dent.
Well, I’m consuming humble pie now. Both as a result of I used to be mistaken, and since I maintain getting my ass kicked after I dive into the backline as Spider-Man, together with everybody else. At least its builders are staying humble, too, with its sport director admitting that there is actually no primary formulation to success: “It’s actually arduous to inform forward of time.” That makes me really feel higher about my faltering powers of prophecy, at the least.
