While we might look at live-service flops like Concord and Highguard and wonder how a studio could continue to gamble in the hopes of getting hundreds of thousands of players, a new hit like Marvel Rivals or ARC Raiders proves that there's still gold in them live-service hills.
Speaking with GamesRadar+ recently, NetEase's publishing and marketing lead Yachen Bian explained that the developer was aware of the risk with live-service titles while developing Marvel Rivals. However, there was a strategy in place to keep player retention high after launch. "After we launched the game, I think the team, we were just continuing to think of ways to make the game better," Bian said. Executive producer Danny Koo added that "live-service games are hard," and that success is "not guaranteed." However, he points to early testing as a strong point for Marvel Rivals building a long-lasting relationship with its community.
Marvel Rivals may not have flipped the script entirely. It's a pretty regular, fast-paced hero shooter at the end of the day, but even if it doesn't quite hit the incredible all-time peaks it saw at launch, it still draws in almost 100k players on Steam alone every day (data via SteamDB). That's enough for a healthy community, but again Marvel Rivals has a huge IP attached, and has never been one to shy away from certain kinds of cosmetics that might let your eye wander away from the gameplay for a moment.