Why Marvel Rivals Banning Mods is a Necessary Evil

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home January 6, 2025 4 Views 8 Min Read
Why Marvel Rivals Banning Mods is a Necessary Evil



Marvel Rivals is off to a huge start and the game hasn’t even hit its first official season yet. With more than 20 million active players in the three short weeks since its launch, NetEase has an incredible amount of forward momentum to make the comic book-themed hero shooter one of the next big players in the live service ecosystem. There’s a huge and active fan community for the game, though it comes with its own set of pros and cons.

When a game reaches the massive popularity that a title like Marvel Rivals is currently enjoying, there’s almost inevitably going to be a vibrant and thriving modding community that crops up around it. Normally, this is a great thing; mods keep fans engaged with a game over time, and it’s a great expression of a community’s creativity. But in Marvel Rivals‘ unique case, banning users from accessing mods might be better for the overall health of the game in the long run.

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Why Marvel Rivals Needs to Crack Down On Mods

Client-Side Cosmetic Mods Decrease Marvel Rivals’ Ability to Effectively Monetize

When it comes to mods, there’s one type that everyone will agree should be banned wholesale and it’s mods that give the player an otherwise unfair advantage over their opponents. No one in their right mind would ever argue against NetEase using whatever means it can to prevent cheaters from ruining the experience for others. But unfortunately, it’s not just these types of mods that NetEase is going to have to bring down the hammer on.

A big part of what’s made Marvel Rivals so successful is the fact that it’s free-to-play. It’s heavily accessible to just about anyone with a PC or console able to run it, with the entirety of the game’s business coming from transactions made in the in-game store. Like Fortnite and Apex Legends, the lifeblood of Marvel Rivals comes from these largely cosmetic purchases.

Simple client-side mods that change the appearance of a character seem pretty harmless on the surface, but these will eventually impact NetEase’s ability to keep the game running over the next few years. A mod that gives Captain America his outfit from Avengers: Infinity War is just a matter of the gamer’s personal preferences. That is until NetEase releases its version of that skin and loses money from players with the mod already installed.

It’s an unfortunate situation, but it’s a necessary decision for the developers that will help support the game far into the future. Marvel Rivals is one of the most promising hero shooters the industry has seen in a number of years, and with a full back catalog of Marvel heroes and villains to add, there’s potential for it to expand and surpass any of its competitors in just a few short years’ time. It would be tragic if the game had to shutter its doors early because it wasn’t generating enough revenue due to unofficial fan-made mods.

On the Bright Side of the Marvel Rivals Modding Situation

It’s not all gloom and doom, though. Yes, the free-to-play nature of the game means that NetEase will have to crack down on cosmetic mods. But on the flip side of that, it means that fans will soon be getting a whole host of cosmetic options to satiate their desire for new content/skins.

If cosmetics are the lifeblood of a free-to-play game like Marvel Rivals, then there will certainly be a glut of them coming down the pipeline for the same reason NetEase will have to eventually take a hardline against mods: they need to keep the lights on somehow. And with each character in Marvel Rivals coming complete with decades of alternate costumes and looks from the comics, movies, and television shows, players will be eating very well when it comes to their cosmetic options for their favorite heroes.

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