Marvel Rivals’ newest replace quietly killed the sport’s burgeoning mod scene

First reported by IGN, it seems that Marvel Rivals’ season one replace has disabled mods within the sport. Till now, there was truly a surprisingly vigorous scene of modders creating skins and different beauty additions for the NetEase hero shooter.

Customers within the Marvel Rivals Discord have stated that the replace has launched asset hash checking to forestall client-side modification of the sport’s information. There was no point out of this modification within the season one patch notes, however that is in all probability as a result of NetEase by no means noticed modding as a reputable participant conduct: Modding is verboten in response to the sport’s phrases of use, and NetEase informed IGN that gamers who mod their Marvel Rivals installations threat being banned.

It is type of a bummer to see, however this felt inevitable⁠—it was much more bizarre to see a free-to-play, cosmetics-driven, reside service multiplayer sport permit beauty mods within the first place. Shopper-side pores and skin mods are largely innocent, however aggressive video games are understandably skittish about any backdoor to creating an unfair benefit. It takes me again to a extra harmless time although: I keep in mind when weapon skins have been one thing you downloaded at no cost in Counter-Strike Supply, versus gaudy, multi-thousand greenback proto-NFTs.

This additionally makes for a quite pathetic coda to the story of these modders whose Trump and Biden skins for Captain America have been faraway from the Nexus⁠—all that Sturm and Drang, and now there are simply no mods anyway for Marvel Rivals. The replace is not all dangerous information although: Alongside a variety of stability adjustments and new maps, season one is seeing the addition of your complete Improbable 4 to Marvel Rivals’ roster, beginning with Reed Richards and Sue Storm.