Marvel Rivals, the popular multiplayer developed by NetEase and packed with Marvel heroes and villains, is not holding on to its players like it used to. Even after releasing Season 2.5 and bringing Ultron into the game last month, the overall interest seems to be fading. May 2025 ended up being the worst in terms of active users, which wasn’t expected, considering all the recent updates.
Steady Fall Since January’s High Point
Back in January 2025, things were looking great with the game hitting 642,333 concurrent players on Steam. But after that, the numbers kept slipping. Each month, we have been seeing fewer and fewer people playing. May saw the biggest drop yet—nearly 24% down from April. And in the last 30 days, the game didn’t even average 100,000 concurrent players. The highest it reached lately was just below 190,000, and that’s far off from where it started the year.
Limited Steam Data Skews the Full Picture
Now, it’s important to remember this data is only from Steam. Marvel Rivals is also playable on the Epic Games Store and on consoles like Xbox and PlayStation. But there’s no clear data coming out for those platforms, so nobody can say for sure how things look over there. Even so, judging by the Steam numbers, it’s clear the early hype has cooled off, at least on PC.
Image Credits: SteamCharts
Ultron was supposed to bring back some spark to the game during Season 2.5, but it just didn’t happen. The update didn’t push any meaningful increase in players. NetEase has been pretty active, giving players new characters and balance changes regularly. But those efforts haven’t been enough to stop the slide.
Final Thoughts
Despite the numbers going down, Marvel Rivals hasn’t disappeared from the scene. Mostly all prominent streamers are still streaming it, and there’s a large portion of the fanbase hanging on. And since it’s part of the Marvel franchise, it’s got more room to bounce back compared to other shooters without that kind of brand behind them.
So, there’s still time for a turnaround, especially if NetEase delivers something major with Season 3. But if not, the player count might keep slipping, and that’s going to be harder to fix the longer it goes on.
While easier said than done, for a game that is pushing out an abundance of content regularly, it becomes even harder to innovate with core gameplay. Something Fortnite has been doing for the past few years, but even the greatest battle royale of today’s age is on a downward slope. NetEase has been shaking up gameplay with major balance tweaks like the recent Team-up swaps, but whether that keeps its huge casual chunk of players entertained remains to be seen this season.
