Marvel Rivals fans take a stand on crossover skins

Now that Marvel Rivals is a smash hit the developers at NetEase are floating ideas around potential collaboration cosmetics, and fans aren’t too pleased.

In a recent earnings call for the final quarter of 2024, representatives from NetEase discussed how the company plans to develop and market Rivals. These options include “crossover events and promotions with other media to expand the user base.” But even though many modern games use collaborations to generate hype, fans of Rivals feel like this would infringe upon the Marvel aesthetic.

In an attempt to support these future collaborations, one player created a Reddit thread stating that not everyone within the community is against the idea of fun brand collaborations. Unfortunately for this user, nearly everyone in the replies completely disagrees with their ideas and offered a plethora of reasons why Rivals should never dip into collaborations.

“I wouldn’t like seeing random collabs happen before big important characters get added,” one player shared after reading the author’s ideas. After all, Rivals has only been out for a few months and has a massive bench filled with larger-than-life heroes and villains. It would feel pretty strange to see characters from other franchises get skins when the developers could put the time and effort into creating famous heroes and villains from the comics.

Other Marvel fans are pointing out the long-standing history that already exists between characters in the game. One fan even went as far as to say there wasn’t any point in doing crossovers and collaborations with as many characters as Marvel has in its history. If the heroes in Rivals start running around dressed as people from different franchises, it would be pretty strange to hear them talk with their pals about events within the Marvel universe.

This also call into question if these collaborations would be themed around cosplay outfits in the style of Overwatch 2, or if they would completely reinvent a character instead. Until we get official news about a collaboration, fans and players can only speculate about these cosmetics.

Others feel like brand collaborations belong solely in other games, with one user saying, “I don’t really want another Fortnite.” At this point, Fortnite is the industry standard for brand collaborations, as it features celebrities, musicians, actors, comic book characters, and more. Now that Rivals has entered the gaming sphere, fans want the game to carve its own path and support the Marvel brand instead of other franchises.

While many people in the thread have variations of the same opinion, this disgruntled user summed up everyone’s sentiments the best: “Please, the last thing I want is the fucking Ninja Turtles in this game.”

It’s currently still unclear if NetEase will go forward with these collaborations in the future, and what brands they are considering collaborating with. The company can always hold off on planned collaborations after assessing the player base’s general opinions like they’ve done in the past.