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 w69 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.
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 w69 slot ทาง เข้า 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.
