There’s Concern Over Marvel Rivals’ Player Count, Even Though It’s Still Super Popular

Don’t you just love this trend of overanalysing Steam-based player numbers? Marvel Rivals is the latest game to attract negativity, as its player count has suffered a substantial drop over the last few months.

But as always, context is vitally important. After releasing in December of last year, the Overwatch-style, live service shooter went on to rack up some seriously impressive numbers. It attracted close to half a million players around launch, and then peaked at a whopping 644,269 players in January 2025.

So Marvel Rivals was doing Steam player counts that a vast majority of games wouldn’t even dare to dream about, but as the saying goes, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”. Well, kind of.

Since it peaked at the aforementioned 644,269 players on Steam, the title’s been declining month on month (except for April, when it saw a slight increase over March).

We’re now in July, and Marvel Rivals has dipped all the way down to a frankly pathetic… 163,232 players. Hold on, that’s still a lot of players.

But again, this is where we’re at. Even at its current player count, Marvel Rivals is hovering amongst the most popular games on Steam. It’s just that when compared to its initial and insane success, some immediately declare that it’s dying.

And of course, we should always mention that Steam numbers don’t tell the whole story. Yes, if something’s doing extremely well on Valve’s PC platform, it usually means that it’s a major hit elsewhere — but this fixation on Steam player counts tends to do the console market a massive disservice.

This very issue has been pointed out by Test Drive Unlimited developer KT Racing, which stated that looking at Steam data alone is “not representative at all”.

Still, having said all of that, we’re betting Marvel Rivals publisher NetEase will be taking a long, hard look at how it can boost the game back up the charts. For a juggernaut company like that, a decline is still a decline — internet hyperbole or not.

What do you make of Marvel Rivals right now? Is action required, or do people really need to stop taking Steam numbers so seriously? Become an armchair analyst in the comments section below.