GUANGZHOU, China — An Avengers-themed game update to ‘Marvel Rivals’ has reduced its selection of available playable characters by half. The changes were introduced in NetEase’s official development blog:
“Today marks the beginning of a new season of Rivals! Thanos has entered the fray to wreak havoc on the Timestream Entanglement in our new Avengers: Metagame storyline. He determined it would be a mercy to eliminate half of all characters after recognizing the unsustainability of our large roster. All of the heroes who died in Avengers: Infinity War have been removed as well as several others chosen at random. Oh, we also dusted Hawkeye’s whole family again. They weren’t characters in the game, we didn’t even bother putting their deaths in a cutscene, we just want you to know he’s really sad about it again.”
The roster change has received widespread negative reactions from fans on social media and video platforms. The popular gaming and comic news channel Supermanchild reviewed the update shortly after its release.
“This is bullshit. ‘Random’ my ass: Hela, Iron Fist, Jeff, Luna, and Venom? They just killed off all the good characters instead of trying to balance them. Who are we supposed to play—fucking Namor? And of course all the Thor skins are on sale now. You know, I’m starting to think this game is just a cash grab… and look at Rivals on SteamDB, this is the lowest the current player count has been since launch. They’ll regret this, we gamers hold grudges. We don’t forget. I’m uninstalling this until I get bored with Warzone again.”
Ding Lei, founder and CEO of NetEase, responded to the backlash in a thread on X – the Everything App.
“Looks like Thanos snapped half our players, too” which was ratioed by several replies featuring the character Luigi from Nintendo’s Mario video game franchise. Lei continued in the next post, “We are honored to uphold the super-powerful legacy created by Marvel Comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe of creating divisive follow-ups to popular media! I just hope we have some players left to disappoint by the time we get to our Ultimatum storyline.”
At press time, NetEase clarified the characters will return next season except for Iron Man who will only be available as a $26 skin for Doctor Doom when he’s added to the roster.
