2024 has proven to be a very bad year for publishers launching new live service games, with big titles like XDefiant, Concord, and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League all failing to find an audience. This week's release of Marvel Rivals might just have bucked the trend, however, as the superhero shooter has already claimed one of the biggest free-to-play launches in Steam history.
Marvel Rivals reached a peak of 444,286 concurrent players on Steam shortly after its launch last night, as SteamDB shows. Obviously that doesn't even include players on console or those using the standalone PC launch, but purely in terms of Steam releases, that's the second-biggest-launch for a brand-new free-to-play game ever, behind only the MMO Lost Ark, which reached a staggering 1,325,305 concurrent players day one on Valve's platform.
There are some caveats to that stat, as several games which debuted on Steam as paid titles and later went free-to-play enjoyed bigger numbers the first day they stopped costing money. Such was the case with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and PUBG. Relaunches like Counter-Strike 2 and Warzone 2.0 also attracted bigger concurrent player numbers. But considering we're talking about a handful of the most successful free-to-play games ever made here, it's safe to say Marvel Rivals is in good company.
Given the headlines live-service games have tended to generate in 2024, it feels downright miraculous to see a new one doing this well at launch. Suicide Squad proved a financial disappointment for publisher Warner Bros, Ubisoft's XDefiant is going down with numerous devs laid off as a result, and Concord shut down just weeks after launch with its development studio closing down a short time later. And hey, remember Foamstars? Square Enix's easy-to-forget foam party shooter both launched and announced an end to updates in 2024.
Marvel Rivals has launched in a good position to outdo all of those games, but whether it can maintain those early players remains to be seen. Our Marvel Rivals review argues that it's "so preoccupied with trying to be like Overwatch that it forgets to play to its own strengths," but the early response in Steam user reviews has been tentatively good, with 74% positive ratings.
After Redfall and Suicide Squad, Concord's failure must be the nail in the coffin for the industry's failed live-service gold rush.
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