Since it came out last December, Marvel Rivals has become the hot new hero shooter. A lot of that can be owed to its visuals, and PC players have since made skin mods that make the game’s cast into non-Marvel characters, like making Jeff the Shark into Chainsaw Man’s Pochita, or Iron Man into Dragon Ball‘s Vegeta.
Sadly, NetEase has seemingly killed Marvel Rivals’ mod skin scene with the game’s newest update. Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman’s recent arrivals were part of the game’s season one update, and players have found the update comes with asset hash checking that’s disabled all mods on PC. As IGN notes, using mods violates the shooter’s terms of use, and NetEase is selling premium skins for each Rivals character on a regular basis. It’s also more than ready to enforce its own rule, as it gave a statement to the outlet advising players to “[not] modify any game files, as doing so carries the risk of getting banned.” So for PC players, they’ll have to stay looking like the characters as they were made for the game.
NetEase probably stamped down Marvel Rivals’ mod skins because they would’ve killed the game’s revenue potential. The game reportedly made $136 million in its launch month alone, but if you’re on PC, why fork over cash to look like Winter Soldier in Thunderbolts* when you could be Captain America as presidents Joe Biden or Donald Trump, or turn Black Panther into Ryan Gosling, one of our hardest working white actors? The skins took off because Rivals’ community is shitposting to their heart’s content, and they’ve been further spurred by the boom of properties like Smile and Godzilla making their way into Call of Duty and Fortnite.
Will this fully stop the mod skin scene? Probably not, but it gives those modders a challenge—hopefully, things don’t get to War Thunder levels of ridiculous.
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