While competitive multiplayer shooter Marvel Rivals has been incredibly popular on just about every platform it has been released on, the PC version of the game tends to use more RAM than players might expect. This has the unfortunate consequence of players with lower-specced systems that still meet the game’s requirements facing performance issues while playing.
Director Guangyun Chen has revealed that the studio is planning to fix this issue. Speaking to PCGamer at GDC 2025, Chen said that the developers at NetEase Games are working on a new feature for the game’s upcoming second season that would help reduce RAM usage. According to Chen, players might get an experimental option in the game’s launcher that will reduce how much RAM the game takes up.
“On PC, we realize that [optimization] is a big problem, especially for the memory consumption,” said Chen. “So it may be that in Season 2, we will have an experimental check box in our launcher players can use to reduce memory [consumption] significantly.”
It is worth noting that Chen has not yet given a definitive timeframe for when this feature will come out. In the interview, Chen said that the earliest that such a feature can come to Marvel Rivals would be alongside the Season 2 update. This would put the timeframe to around mid-April.
“It’s a very big problem, but it’s a lot of work to organize [a fix],” said Chen. “We cannot just release it in a small patch, we have to fully test it. But we realize the problem and we’re going to keep optimizing.”
“It’s hard for all developers to use the engine and make it good. It’s a new engine for us. We have a lot of hard work [ahead] to optimize it.”
Marvel Rivals, available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, has been an incredible success for NetEase. Back in February, the company revealed in its yearly earnings report that the competitive shooter had managed to garner more than 40 million players.
While the game brought in some much-needed competition against Blizzard’s own competitive hero shooter Overwatch 2, NetEase believes that both games can co-exist with their own audiences. The context for this was the release of Overwatch 2 in China, where NetEase is handling the title alongside its own shooter.
“The expectations for Overwatch are similar to those for World of Warcraft and Hearthstone,” said the company in a statement earlier this month. “The aim is to revitalize the product and reach new highs. Both Marvel Rivals and Overwatch are excellent superhero shooters, and the market is large enough to accommodate both games. NetEase will strive to meet the diverse demands of their respective player communities.”
Blizzard, for its part, has also been improving Overwatch 2 with a host of updates thanks to “internal pressure” to make the game better being felt in the wake of Marvel Rivals‘ success.
For more details about Marvel Rivals, check out our review. If you’re also interested in Overwatch 2, check out the details for its recent major update.