Marvel Games has partnered with Chinese developer NetEase Games to launch Marvel Rivals, a new licensed multiplayer title that pits the Earth’s mightiest heroes against their equally iconic villains. 

NetEase is crafting a storyline that will see the tyrannical Doctor Doom and his future self attempt to conquer various worlds in the Marvel multiverse. In each match, six online players will choose from 18 initial avatars (including Hulk, Spider-Man, Loki, Magento and Iron Man) and compete together as a team to accomplish the game’s objectives and keep Doctor Doom in check. 

Instead of going straight to market with Marvel Rivals, the partners are planning to conduct a range of closed alpha and open beta tests on PC starting in May so players can take a first look at the game and provide critical feedback to its developers as they work on improving the user experience and expanding to new platforms. Post-launch, NetEase will support the free-to-play title in future updates that include new characters, maps and game modes. 

Marvel Rivals is part of a hero shooter game genre that was first popularized with the launch of Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch in 2016. Within the first year of its release, Overwatch sales and in-game microtransactions generated more than US$1 billion in revenue for the developer, and it reached a peak of 50 million active players in three years. 

This marks the third Marvel-branded title NetEase has developed, following mobile multiplayer games Marvel Duel (2020) and Marvel Super War (2019). Outside of this key partnership with Marvel, the studio has worked on a wide range of licensed games for smartphones, including Tom and Jerry Chase, The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War and Dead By Daylight Mobile.