Even before Marvel Rivals launched, the game was already full of leaks of incoming characters that many people were excited about.
A new rumor has emerged that many leaks were fake and that NetEase was just trolling the data miners, but that isn’t the case.
Too Busy to be Trolling Leakers
In a recent interview with IGN, Marvel Rivals producers confirmed that they weren’t planting fake information in their data files to troll leakers. Instead, the leakers have been finding scraps of the game designer’s ‘experiments’ and falsely assuming they were part of the game.
Producer Weicong Wu explained:
“You can see that for each character's design actually we come through a very complicated process and we make a lot of concepts, trials, prototypes, development, et cetera. So there could be some information left in the code, and it might mean that we have tried those directions and they may appear or may not appear in our future plans. And whether or not they will appear in our future pipeline is highly depending on what kind of gameplay experience our players would expect in our game."
Executive producer Danny Koo also adds, “The team experimented with a lot of play styles and heroes. It was like there's someone doing scratch paperwork and then just left a notebook there, and someone [a dataminer] decided to open it with no context."
When asked directly if they were doing anything to mislead leakers from finding out about the game, Koo said, “No. We would rather spend our time developing the actual game."
Which Characters Have Leaked So Far?
click to enlarge
+ 2While Season 1 of the game has focused on the release of the Fantastic Four, several other characters have been revealed online, including their abilities kit and some art for the game; some leaked characters include Ultron and Blade. Even Mister Fantastic and the rest of the F4 were leaked before they were officially revealed.
For now, the leaks say that the next season will focus heavily on the arrival of mutants and the X-Men. Besides an incoming map that’s said to be the X-Mansion, incoming characters are said to include the likes of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Emma Frost, Colossus, Beast, and Nightcrawler. There are also said to be plans for Gambit, Rogue, and Jubilee.
One of the more outrageous incoming characters is also said to be Professor X himself. The notion of Xavier hovering around and performing psychic attacks in the game felt so absurd that many people were almost sure this was one of the fake leaks that NetEase had planted.
We’ll Just Have to Wait and See
click to enlarge + 2For now, NetEase is solely focused on the drop of the other half of the Fantastic Four, so players have no idea who could be coming next. With the characters already deep in development, it does seem like Ultron is a good guess, but even Invisible Woman had no leaks before she was officially revealed, so maybe the next hero could catch everyone completely by surprise.
Marvel Rivals is now playable for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
For more articles like this, take a look at our Marvel Rivals page.