NetEase’s Character Leaks: The Fine Line Between Rumor and Reality

Is Marvel Rivals developer NetEase Games truly attempting to plant misleading character leaks within its source code to mislead dataminers? Believe it or not, the answer is no, as its executive producer clearly states, “we would rather focus our efforts on developing the actual game.”

Following its launch last year, dataminers quickly began investigating the hero shooter’s code to uncover potential insights regarding the introduction of forthcoming Marvel Rivals characters. While some discoveries – such as the arrival of the Fantastic Four – proved to be accurate, as IGN reports, the unveiling of numerous names led to speculation that some of them were indeed false, embedded in the code solely to ensnare dataminers. In conversation with IGN regarding this subject, producer Weicong Wu and executive producer Danny Koo confirm that this wasn’t a deliberate tactic to waste the time of leakers, but also clarify that the characters in question are not assured to appear in the future.

Emphasizing the complexity of each character’s development, Wu acknowledges that “there may be some data left in the code, which could suggest that we explored those avenues, and they might or might not be part of our future plans.” As for how they decide who will make the cut, he mentions it is “heavily [dependent] on the type of gameplay experience our players would anticipate in our game.” That is… quite ambiguous, yet I suppose he doesn’t need to reveal everything about the game future, merely confirming that some of these leaks could potentially turn out to be accurate in due time.

What is clear is that there isn’t a “ten-year plan” in motion behind the scenes, although Koo believes “it’d be wonderful” if there were one. He compares the datamined information to a notebook left behind by “someone doing rough drafts,” with someone later discovering it “without any background.” When directly asked if NetEase Games was intentionally misleading dataminers with these details, Koo responds: “No. We would rather focus our time on developing the actual game.” You know what? Fair enough.

So, that list of datamined characters could either serve as a treasure trove of information or lead to absolutely nothing. At the very least, it appears to confirm that each of these mentioned heroes was considered in some capacity by NetEase Games previously, so who knows, perhaps the likes of Professor X and Paste-Pot Pete might make a comeback in the future.