ALBAWABA - One of 2025's most popular live service games, Marvel Rivals has lost 85 percent of its playerbase on Steam, according to a report by Forbes.
What was once considered a huge hit and the killer of Activision-Blizzard's Overwatch has witnessed a massive drop in its player base on Steam, plummeting from 644,000 concurrent players in January 2025 to 98,000 this week, despite only coming out this year.
Marvel Rivals loses 85% of its playerbase
While nearly 100,000 players isn't necessarily a bad thing, Forbes revealed that the Marvel Rivals' player base has been constantly declining on Steam over the months, indicating that NetEase might have a hard time keeping it alive due to production costs.
However, a spike in playerbase could potentially occur as the game receives more content and updates down the line. For example, Respawn’s long-running battle royale Apex Legends saw its first major spike in 2023, climbing from 117,000 players in 2020 to 330,000.
In reference to the diagram above, Marvel Rivals has experienced a massive decline on Steam since its launch in December 2024.
However, it's important to note that the game also launched on other platforms, including PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, so it would be unfair to compare concurrent players solely via Steam.
As news of the report in question flooded social media, it received mixed reactions from gamers and fans of the game.
A social media user wrote on X (formerly Twitter), "Are we acting like 100k average players is bad now? Seriously, Battlefield 6 will also likely drop to this amount in 10 months' time; it's par for the course for almost every game nowadays. Not even factoring how big the playerbase for Marvel Rivals is on console."
Another wrote, "This is concurrent players, not players overall," and added, "Not only is this considered normal, but most people would see that as a good ratio for a game to have."
It's only normal for a live service game to lose part of its playerbase as time goes on; many gamers lose interest, find new titles to play, or jump onto the next popular multiplayer title.
