As a free-to-play multiplayer title, Marvel Rivals makes its money in the way you'd expect, through selling skins and other cosmetic items to players via battle passes and its own storefront. Game director Guangyun Chen feels pretty happy with where Marvel Rivals' monetisation is right now, but he knew that for the game to get money from its players it needed to have a strong formula first.
Speaking with FRVR, Chen said that the game should "naturally" want to make players invest more than just their time. "We really believe that having a consumer-friendly monetisation system is super important," he said. "When we were working on MR, we established two fundamental design principles: first, to make the gameplay fun, and second, to encourage players to spend money based on their love for the game."
"When players find the game enjoyable and immersive, they naturally want to invest in it. That's when they'll start picking up costumes and other cosmetics," he added. It helps that Marvel Rivals' costumes are pretty well designed, and even if the game has been criticised for making the most of its female characters, those so-called "gooner skins" still sell like hotcakes, so you can't really blame NetEase for continuing to make them.
It might sound obvious to say that a game should be good before it starts asking for money from players, but that's where a lot of criticism for "greedy monetisation" comes from. If the value of a skin seems to be way over what you'd pay for having fun in the game with a new outfit, players feel like they're being conned. Luckily, it seems this is something Marvel Rivals isn't suffering from.