Marvel Rivals is showing something that has never been seen before, and certainly never seen before, for games like these.
Marvel Rivals was released on December 6, 2024, and took the gaming landscape by storm, becoming a favorite among fans of Hero shooters. With a star-studded lineup and well-established character base, Marvel Rivals quickly became the popular kid on the block, overshadowing other team shooters of its type.
By its first week, the game had over 480,990 people playing it. For most games like these, the player count slowly drops off after the first few weeks. This happened with Rivals, however, not by much. By its second week, Marvel Rivals had retained 90% of its player base and kept it up for the following month.
According to SteamDB, Marvel Rivals had almost 300,000 concurrent players throughout the last month, and people were comparing and contrasting the stats on Reddit. For the uninitiated, this is very significant as for many of these live-service games, the player counts usually drop by a large margin, falling to 40%- 60% levels. By contrast, Rivals has had almost 94% player retention.
With the release of Season 1 with some incredible Skins and two new maps as well as four new heroes to the roster, it is highly likely that player numbers will only go up. With wonderful skins, the game is surely making NetEase a lot of money, with estimates ranging from $100 to $136 million just in the first month of the game.
