It's Pretty Clear Why Marvel Rivals Has Lost 77% Of Its Playerbase In 4 Months

"Marvel Rivals" came along at a perfect moment, when gamers were unsatisfied with other major shooters like "Overwatch 2" and were looking for something that could give them great gameplay without constantly hitting them with microtransactions. The game hit a massive peak player count of nearly 650,000 games on Steam alone shortly after its launch, but since then its active player count has dropped by 77%.

Some of what's happening with "Marvel Rivals" is to be expected. All games lose players shortly after launch, and right now gamers have a plethora of exciting new options like "Oblivion Remastered" and "Expedition 33" to check out. It's really not surprising that "Marvel Rivals" has lost some players, and with daily peaks still averaging more than 100,000, the game is still in a good place.

Losing players is inevitable for any game, but the specifics still matter. Aside from all the other mind-blowing games coming out in 2025, "Marvel Rivals" is also competing against the various, sometimes contradictory, demands of its players. The game has legitimate issues that need to be fixed, and has also run into some problems that tend to plague live-service titles. What's happening with the "Marvel Rivals" playerbase isn't unprecedented by any means, but it matters to the game's fans and anyone who's invested in the state of competitive gaming in general.

Like so many other competitive multiplayer games, "Marvel Rivals" has a matchmaking system that sorts players and sets them into teams for games. In theory, the matchmaking system should ensure that teams are as evenly-matched as possible. As long as teams are on more-or-less equal footing, games stay engaging for everyone involved.

Unfortunately, matchmaking systems are hard to get right, and many players aren't happy with the system in "Marvel Rivals." Particularly since Season 2 began, players feel like the matchmaking system is deciding winners and losers before the game even begins. "Something truly went wrong with the matchmaker in S2," wrote one frustrated Redditor. "Games are 80% stomps one way or the other and it's streaky as hell." No one likes feeling as though they've been set up to lose every match they have enough free time to play.

The ranking system in "Marvel Rivals" also isn't helping. Players have frequently complained about how many points are required to rank up, and when Season 2 came with a ranking reset, some couldn't take it. "It feels like my effort and commitment to improving [in Season 1] didn't pay off, and I have to do it all over again," wrote another Reddit user. The reset was presumably meant to give players another few months of climbing up the ranks, but the move just didn't sit right with some of them.

Competition brings out the best and worst in people. Anyone who's spent any amount of time playing online shooters knows that gamers tend to let their inner aggression out on their fellow teammates in the chat. The typical "Marvel Rivals" game is leagues away from an Xbox Live lobby circa 2010, but more and more people have started complaining about the prevalence of toxic players.

Most of the trouble in "Marvel Rivals" right now mirrors an issue that all hero or role-based shooter games run into. A well-balanced team needs multiple roles working together, but players tend to have strong preferences. Recently there's been a sharp divide between Strategist and Duelist players, neither of which seems to value the role the other plays. The feud became intense enough that a significant number of Strategists went on "strike" and stopped playing their roles.

Season 2 brought some gameplay tweaks that have also pushed players into new strategies that parts of the community don't appreciate. The current "dive meta" emphasizes attacking the opposing team's support players as quickly as possible. The support role is arguably one of the most important, and easily the least popular, roles in the game, so the fact that support players are taking the brunt of the assault in a match is causing serious tension. Combine the toxic discussion around roles with an aggressive, frustrating meta and a matchmaking system that often pre-determines winners and losers, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

"Marvel Rivals" may have lost 77% of its daily active players, but that honestly shouldn't be cause for concern. We've already talked about how the playercounts tend to ebb and flow for live service games on a regular basis. The life cycle of these games usually follows a simple pattern: initial hype boosts the game to a peak, some players lose interest while the core playerbase locks in, and then every new season sees an initial influx of players checking out the new content.

Just a handful of months into its existence, "Marvel Rivals" is already settling into the typical routine. Fans of the game don't need to panic about the dwindling player count because we've seen this before. "Helldivers 2" lost a full 90% of its players, and that game is still chugging along and widely considered a success. A study of gaming habits suggested that 45% of "Overwatch 2" players were lost to "Marvel Rivals," and no one expects Blizzard's game to vanish any time soon.

A drop in players is normal, but that doesn't mean developers should ignore it. There are always going to be specific issues that cause some players to leave sooner than they otherwise might have. NetEase can't control when Bethesda or another studio drops an exciting game, but they can stay on top of the complaints people have about "Marvel Rivals" and make sure the experience is as good as possible for the core fans who aren't going to leave anytime soon.