Marvel Rivals Hits 40 Million Players as Major Update Arrives

NetEase’s Q4 earnings report has revealed that Marvel Rivals has now surpassed 40 million players across all platforms. The game quickly gained momentum, topping Steam’s global top sellers chart after its December 6 launch and hitting 10 million registered users within just 72 hours. As of January 2025, it was again the Season 1 update that triggered yet another spike in engagement, placing Marvel Rivals once again atop the No. 1 position on Steam’s most-played and sellers charts globally. In fact, just 11 days after release, the game was already well beyond the 20 million players threshold.

Marvel Rivals Surpasses 40 Million Players as Fantastic Four Update Adds Human Torch, The Thing, and New Map

Marvel Rivals earned over $135 million in revenue in its first month alone, according to reports. Though the game was financially successful, NetEase opted to let go of its Western support team, relocating operations to China, where development is cheaper. But it’s not as if support is lacking for the title: new updates and improvements continue to roll in. Speaking of updates, tomorrow’s patch will introduce the final two members of the Fantastic Four: Human Torch and The Thing. Human Torch joins as a Duelist-type character, and The Thing as a Vanguard.

Also included is a new Convergence map, Empire of Eternal Night: Central Park, along with gameplay refinements and matchmaking tweaks. It will also introduce a 0.5-second grace period at the end of overtime in all modes to avoid matches finishing abruptly. Additionally, in Quick Mode, “Substitute” matchmaking will be turned off if the match is already at its final stage, and the loading times of overall matches will be optimized.

On the technical side, the update adds NVIDIA DLSS 4 support, including DLSS Multi-Frame Generation for GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs. This feature was tested in the GeForce RTX 5090 review, as NVIDIA provided early access. AMD users will also benefit from this update, with improved frame pacing when using FSR 3 Frame Generation for smoother gameplay. Additionally, AMD Radeon Anti-Lag 2 is now supported, reducing system latency for users with Radeon RX 5000 Series or newer GPUs.

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