Marvel Rivals started an impressive journey, according to the Steam data, but whether it will be able to retain this crowd longer is the question.

2024 isn’t a great year for live service games. Throughout the year, players have witnessed back-to-back failures of some of the highly anticipated games. Some of them even met the worst fate possible and were removed from the market. Therefore, the release of Marvel Rivals was full of anxiety, and all eyes were on NetEase Game’s latest third-person hero shooter game performance at launch.

Marvel Rivals has created a record that made gamers a bit relaxed about live service games. Image: NetEase Games.

Marvel Rivals is a 6v6 player vs. player hero shooter game that was launched on December 6, with 33 playable characters. After multiple live-service hero shooter games failed this year, the success of this game was required to revive this genre. Although it is released toward the end of 2024, the launch day performance of the game ensured it is not going to face a similar fate with others.

Marvel Rivals Created a Launch Day Record That Crossed Overwatch 2

After Concord‘s failure, the success of this hero-shooter game was required to re-establish this genre. Image Credit: NetEase Games.

This year Steam has been flooded with renowned titles. While Palworld inaugurates this flood of gamers, Black Myth: Wukong takes to a new height and becomes the most-played single-player game on Valve’s gaming platform with around two million concurrent players. That’s only one side of the picture.

There’s a dark side where lies the pathetic failure of Concord and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Whether the competitive market was the reason behind these failures or it’s something else that caused these tragic falls is still unclear, but the release of Marvel Rivals highlighted that irrespective of the competition, players still value quality games.

The game was launched just a day ago, and it has already reached the fifth-largest Steam concurrent player count within a few hours. The game took a long time in the development process, and after each beta run, NetEase Games analyzed the feedback to adjust the gameplay.

As a consequence, immediately after its launch, the SteamDB data says it has touched 444,286 concurrent players, with mostly positive reviews on Steam.

This record player count has crossed Blizzard’s Overwatch sequel, which was released in 2023 and had its all-time peak on Steam of 75,000 players. NetEase Games shattered this record within a few hours of its third-person hero shooter game being released.

Another thing to consider here is that this stat is only on Steam, but the game was also released on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. At this point, the official player count on these platforms isn’t available. However, it’s easily understandable that the actual player count of the game on its opening day was much higher than 444,286.

Marvel Rivals was released on Thursday, and it will enter the weekend within a few hours. Therefore, this player count will surely increase over the weekend, and where it will reach is beyond imagination. This game will probably break a few more records in the upcoming two days.

Marvel Rivals Community Is Still Anxious About the Future of the Game

Whether this game will be able to maintain this popularity or not will be proved soon. Image Credit: NetEase Games.

NetEase Games has given players the biggest surprise toward the end of the year, and the massive opening of the game clearly states that players have loved the game and, especially, some of the in-game characters. Still, some dark clouds surround the game.

Reportedly, Marvel Rivals is third in Steam’s top sellers list, with Steam Deck and Path of Exile 2 above it on the list. Still, on Reddit, players are concerned about the future of the game and whether it will be able to maintain this popularity for a long time or will meet a disappointing downfall.

Some players have compared this game with Multiversus and XDefiant and stated that despite these games being launched with a banger, they failed to keep that crowd for a long time.

A group of players is hopeful that NetEase Games won’t abandon this game and will update it from time to time to maintain its quality.

Whether this game will fail after this glorious start or it will eventually be washed away like a few other games will be cleared within a few days.

However, there’s indeed going to be a tough fight this weekend as Path of Exile 2 early access has also begun, and this weekend it will be a hard fight between these two games to attract players.