Marvel Rivals Company: Who Actually Makes It

The Marvel Rivals company answer has two halves, and conflating them is the source of most of the confusion about who decides what in this game.

Who builds it

NetEase Games — one of China's largest game companies, headquartered in Guangzhou — is both the developer and the publisher. The team is not exclusively Chinese: NetEase assembled it from global hires, including developers who previously worked on Call of Duty and Battlefield, which shows in how the shooting feels compared to most hero shooters.

Who owns the characters

Marvel Games is the collaborating partner. Marvel — and therefore Disney — owns the characters, approves how they are portrayed, and shapes what can and cannot be done with them. Marvel Games does not build the game.

That division explains a lot:

• Hero selection is a negotiation, not purely a design decision.
• Costumes have to clear Marvel approval, which is why some obvious comics looks take seasons to arrive.
• Characters from outside Marvel cannot appear at all, no matter how often people ask.

The announcement

The game was revealed jointly by NetEase Games and Marvel Games from Guangzhou and Los Angeles, and launched free-to-play on 6 December 2024 with Season 0: Doom's Rise.

Why the business model matters

NetEase makes its money from cosmetics rather than from the box price — every hero is free and unlocked, and the store sells costumes. That is a deliberate structural choice: it keeps the competitive roster open to everyone, and it puts the revenue pressure entirely on skins, which is why the store rotates as aggressively as it does.