Marvel Rivals Dev says they are not trolling data – “We would rather spend time developing games”

Marvel rival DatamIners believes developers are using a list of potential future characters hidden in game code. But Netease and Marvel say they have better things to do…just like actually making a game.

Last month, DatamIners started sharing Potential future heroes are hidden in Marvel competitorsWhen the Fantastic Four was officially announced, some of them seemed to be confirmed soon. But as the list of data-shooting heroes grew, another rumor began to circulate in the community: some names were fake, and developers planted misleading data sensitizers there.

Even now, there are differences in the community if any data shooting characters are indeed seriously considered in the game.

Recently, we had the opportunity to directly ask Marvel rival producer Weicong Wu and Marvel Games executive producer Danny Koo if they secretly do the elaborate trolls. While it sounds like there is no prank pulling up here, we should still carry all the names with a grain of salt. This is what Wu has to say:

“So, first of all we want to say is that we don't recommend anyone to make adjustments to the game's files,” he began. “In addition, you can see that for the design of each character, we actually went through a very complex process. The process we did a lot of concepts, experiments, prototypes, development, etc. It means that we have tried these instructions and may appear in our future plans or may not appear in our future pipeline, depending on The gaming experience we players expect in the game.”

Koo added: “If I had a ten-year plan, that would be great. But the team tried a lot of play styles, heroes. It was like someone doing scratch papers and then leaving a notebook there, someone (Dataminer) decided to open it without a context.”

I pushed a little and asked if they were interested in trolling people. Koo replied, “No. We'd rather take the time to develop the actual game.”

In the same conversation, we also discussed how to choose a character first to add a character to Marvel competitors. The two told me that the team plans to update one year in advance and is committed to keeping their current monthly additions at a pace. For each update, NetEase first looks at what types of characters and skills are needed to balance the rest of the game, adds various varieties to the roster and proposes a list of several different possible additions. Wu told me that part of NetEase's strategy to achieve game balance is to reduce aggressively adjusting existing characters for fine adjustments, and more adding new characters and experiences to keep things fresh, filling in the gaps, supporting characters is a little bit of a new team A character that is capable or may be a little too strong is weak.

Once there was a list of possibilities, NetEase brought these suggestions to Marvel games and started working on initial design. From there, they looked at the excitement of the community right now, and things planned for a year in other Marvel departments, for example, if a big movie or comic arc is coming, they can connect the characters to it. This helps them make the final decision about who comes in. All of this explains why there may be many different heroes listed in the code – Netease has always had many ideas.

Marvel competitors are Excellent launcheach new character seems to make it stronger, human torch and things Will be the latest hero to join the game On February 21, we also talked with Wu and Koo about the possibility of launching a Marvel competitor with the Nintendo Switch 2, You can read here.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior journalist at IGN. You can find her post on bluesky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Is there a story tip? Send it to [email protected].