Marvel Rivals Planning Big Change In Update 9.5

Ahead of the launch of Season 9.5 for Marvel Rivals, NetEase confirms a big quality of life improvement coming to the game, allowing players to take back some of their hard drive space. Season 9 of Marvel Rivals is about to hit its midseason, which means new content and another massive update. However, alongside huge character balancing, NetEase is planning a big change that should please players.

In addition to a constant schedule for seasonal updates, NetEase continues to make improvements to the background and foundational elements of the game. While that includes constant character balancing and other mode changes, NetEase continues to ensure a safe playing environment. For many online games, cheaters are a constant thorn for studios, and Marvel Rivals is no exception. Back in May, NetEase issued a new ban wave in Marvel Rivals and threatened further action against those who continued to threaten the integrity of the game. Update 9.5 is bringing its own background improvements as well.

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Marvel Rivals Shrinking Its Install Size

With how large games continue to be, especially live-service titles, Marvel Rivals is making a much welcomed change with Update 9.5. During the Season 9.5 Dev Vision, creative director Guangguang revealed that considering with each Marvel Rivals seasonal update, the game’s file size continues to grow larger, so with 9.5, the team has found a way to add in a massive texture compression overhaul to reduce that footprint. Better yet, while the compression will reduce the total file size, it won’t negatively impact the game’s visual fidelity.

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Drag weapons to fill the grid

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Loadout Logic

Tap on a weapon to rotate it or press R while dragging.

Time—

Filled0/36

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When the 9.5 Update launches on August 7, it will “drastically shrink” the game’s size across all platform hard drives. For PC players, they’re expected to see the size shrink by 40GB, while Xbox and PlayStation players will save about 15 GB. However, one thing to note is that since the game’s assets are being repackaged, the update itself will be bigger than usual, but as Guangguang indicates, the final install size will be “much lighter.”

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Image via Marvel

Image: NetEase Games

Image via NetEase Games

While Season 9 brought the fan favorite X-Men character, Jubilee, into the game, the midseason update is adding Parker Robbins, aka The Hood. While many assumed The Hood was coming in Marvel Rivals Season 8, the latest Vanguard character channels dark magic and utilizes his guns to bring the fight to his enemies. His ultimate ability also sees him transform into a sort of demonic gun turret to hit for extreme damage.

The file reduction could also bode well for a potential Nintendo Switch 2 version of Marvel Rivals, a console which has less hard drive space out of the box than the other versions. While there’s been no official update yet, Marvel Games executive producer Danny Koo previously mentioned that a Switch 2 port was being planned after the NetEase team wasn’t able to get a development kit for a Marvel Rivals version. Still, it’s largely assumed that the port is in active development, so it’s likely only a matter of when and not if anymore.