It's only taken 3 days for Overwatch's worst meta to manifest in Marvel Rivals: "Games change. GOATS is inevitable."

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One of Blizzard's biggest Overwatch-shaped headaches is now NetEase's to solve

Heroes and villains face off in Marvel Rivals key art
(Image credit: NetEase)

NetEase's Overwatch challenger Marvel Rivals is enjoying a decent start to life with 10 million players in 3 days, and – what's that? People are already resurrecting GOATS? Crud.

Here's some history to start: In 2019, the second season of The Overwatch League became dominated by what's known as the GOATS meta – A tactic that involved playing with three tanks and three healers to steamroll the opposition oh so slowly. It was effective, tough to stop, and very boring to watch.

Not limited to esports, we also saw it in higher ranks of competitive play. And while that does mean that plenty of fans didn't have to play against it, they certainly had to watch their favorite streamers get flattened by it at a snail's pace. The whole meta certainly influenced Overwatch's development as, alongside balance passes, we also saw the hero shooter limit how many players could fill each role in a given ranked game. On top of that, Overwatch 2 shrunk the team size down to five from six.

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"Games change. GOATS is inevitable," esports journalist Liz Richardson says. 

But will a Marvels-shaped GOATS meta actually be an issue? It remains to be seen, though fans have been discussing it over the past few months and some believe the current hero balance means it won't dominate as it did in Overwatch. 

Still, it raises some interesting questions for developer NetEase. The Marvel-themed hero shooter takes notes from early Overwatch, though Blizzard had to change some things up for a reason. How NetEase tackles Blizzard's design headaches could go a long way to deciding how much staying power it truly has.

Our Marvel Rivals review says the hero shooter is "so preoccupied with trying to be like Overwatch that it forgets to play to its own strengths" - like not having a GOATS meta, I guess.

Iain Harris
Iain Harris
News Editor, Games

I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new cloak – the more colourful, the better.