Marvel Rivals had everything going for it at launch. It had all the bones of Overwatch 2, but with fresh twists and a giant roster of potential characters.

Rivals even launched with characters that are already household names like Spider-Man and Wolverine. The game was basically marketing itself. And with the added promise of regular content and season releases, Marvel Rivals was set to make people forget all about Overwatch 2. 

Players were even excited about plans to introduce new heroes very regularly. In fact, the release date of the next Marvel Rivals hero – and the start of season 3 – is this July 11, 2025. With the introduction of Jean “Phoenix” Gray, a new Duelist character with a similar model to Cloak & Dagger. As part of the season 3.5 release around August 11, 2025, Marvel Rivals will be releasing Blade, another Duelist character, that anyone can play for free. 

Ideally, this should all be  enough to draw people in. Yet, these Marvel Rivals Ads NetEase Games is still comfortable releasing these low quality gacha ads. There’s nothing inherently wrong with advertising, but the inaccurate depictions of players and the blatant pandering are fairly insulting at this point. Especially on Reddit. If I hadn’t already played the game for myself, these ads would convince me not to even try it. So, let’s take a look and see where NetEase’s marketing is going wrong.

“Name One… I’ll Wait.”

CMV: No games have better skins than Marvel Rivals! Name one…I’ll Wait.
byu/MarvelRivals inu_MarvelRivals

Everything about this Reddit ad just screams, “how do you do, fellow kids?” It is posted by the Official Reddit Account, but badly pretends as if a user or player is holding this opinion instead. The claim is that Marvel Rivals has the best skins and that is simply wrong. It’s not even a matter of opinion, Rivals just doesn’t have enough cosmetic content to compare to other games. As of right now, Emma Frost only has 3 skins. 2 are hardly transformative and 1 is the default look. Meanwhile, Widowmaker in OW2 has 29 skins. Even if we take a character that has been in the game since release, such as Spider-Man, they only have 5 skins and one is just the symbiote suit. Unless the designs for Emma Frost’s skins are absolutely peak – which they aren’t – they don’t measure up to having 29 potential options for one character.

The ad has that terrible format of “Change my mind” to inspire engagement, but the comments and upvotes are locked. Oh well, I can still try to answer their challenge here. Name one game with better skins? How about 7? Overwatch, Warzone, LoL, Dota 2, CS2, Apex Legends, and Fortnite. Regardless of having been released longer, these games feature cosmetics that go from slight color accents to completely different themes and outfits. Rivals has so much potential because comic books are always featuring new designs, but will they choose to access them?

To get back to the ad, it displays 3 different skins, black, dark-blue, and white. The black is the most transformative and interesting, but it’s not even the one they feature in the gameplay section of the ad. The skin is also clearly designed to appeal to a certain “audience” rather than just being cool in its own right. Which is a shame because while the other cosmetics may have subtle X’s that tie her to the X-Men, only that one option has the black-gold theme with the X-Men pendant on display.

The gameplay at the end is also the most mundane display that could’ve been chosen. Like putting a cheap hat on a mannequin. In the ad, Emma Frost gets dived by two members of the enemy team, then she lazily dispatches them while they bumble around and attack behind her. She then spends the rest of the clip whittling down the enemy Dr. Strange with her shield, not even attacking. This whole ad just feels incredibly phoned in. It spends about 6 seconds displaying the skins it’s advertising – that’s 2 seconds per outfit – then spends another 20 seconds with gameplay that doesn’t even display the best cosmetic. Just terrible youth pandering ragebait.

“It’s Peni’s Trap!”

This has to be the WORST AD I have ever seen.
byu/AdamoO_ inmarvelrivals

I couldn’t find the original ad posted by the Marvel Rivals official account, but luckily u/AdamO_ was able to screenrecord and post it before it could be wiped off the face of the internet. 

Within the first few seconds this ad loses all credibility with the audience. We can clearly see both his hands in the shot, off of the controller, but his character is making large and coordinated movements. So, unless he’s supposed to be playing with his feet, any illusion of the actor actually playing the game is shattered immediately. When we think about it, we know the ad is fake. But it shouldn’t be so mind-numbingly obvious. Then, as his character is in position, he puts his hands back down as if no one saw anything and he could pretend he was playing the whole time. This ad unfortunately mirrors the format and quality of mobile ads that have you downloading a completely different game than what was advertised.

I’m also glossing over the obnoxious and cringe statements he makes at the start of the clip as well. Why does he say those things? Is that how the marketers at Rivals think their playerbase sounds like? Maybe on the younger side, but their most popular demographic is ages 18 – 34. One would think that audiences of this age range might instead react negatively to these obnoxious outbursts. The overly exaggerated facial expressions and gestures are an obvious attention-grabbing technique, but it’s the marketing equivalent of “look at this shiny thing!” rather than touching on how the game might provide value to the potential player. There’s also the closed captioning with the occasional colored word. This is a positive thing because it means you can watch the ad without sound, which is great for our hearing impaired friends and anyone else watching this ad as well.

I recall the original video actually being longer. Not that I would recommend watching a longer version of this ad, but this current iteration feels so chopped together in terms of editing. In the original ad, we can see how badly the Starlord is playing (probably “acting” for the video) and the actor himself fumbles around for a reason to blame anything but his own gameplay. Is this supposed to be indicative of the real fan base? If this is a representation of the people who play this game, it ruins any interest I may have. From the combination of his expressions and word choice, it doesn’t sound like he’s having any fun! He calls to God for help and exclaims that Peni is everywhere. In my opinion, the script and the acting paints Rivals players as vindictive rage-aholics with main-character syndrome. I know that’s not true and the majority of Rivals players are normal gamers, but this ad is clearly playing off a customer persona that has been observed. 

“Amazing Me”

So… Marvel Rivals has cringe ads now?
byu/CyfrowaKrowa inmarvelrivals

This ad is still in circulation and is a little easier to find, but I still found it valuable to link to u/CyfrowaKowa’s post regarding the ad. Check out the thread for some funny memes about cringe overload.

This ad continues the trend of phoning it in and exaggerating expressions. The very first frame is some weird title image with a thumbnail and “Best Free Superhero PVP shooter game pt. 3” as a titlecard. How is this acceptable in the finished ad? This is reminiscent of my very first Sony Vegas project title. Where is the quality control? Or is this the standard they have set for it?

The script in this ad is maybe more terrible than the last. At least the first ad tries to make it sound like an authentic player, this one just has the guy narrating his actions before they even happen. He says “surrounded by 3 villains” while his team is in front defeating them. It then cuts to a different match entirely (notice the map objective changes) where three enemies are clearly “acting” in chasing down his character. They could’ve definitely beaten him here, but they purposefully stop short of draining his healthbar to zero so they can adhere to the script. They then perfectly group up for Jeff’s ultimate, which you can hear and somewhat see coming, and get yeeted off the edge. Two of the three characters thrown are extremely capable of diving back onto the map, but they choose to fall because this is Jeff’s main character moment.

This is what I think the main problem is with these ads, the whole “main character” feeling they try to inspire. Marvel Rivals is a team based game. If it wasn’t, there wouldn’t be different roles and teams of 6 players. So, if someone is enticed to try the game based on the idea that they can exclusively play Jeff and consistently win when outnumbered, they are in for a crude awakening. It is false advertising in itself. It’s like saying anyone can be the next Kobe Bryant if they buy the right shoes. As I said earlier, based on these ads alone I would have no idea that the game is so competitive and team-oriented. If I didn’t expect or want that, I would easily be misled by these ads.

“Berserk Mode”

The people behind these terrible marvel rivals ads need to be stopped…
byu/Matsjee inmarvelrivals

This next ad with Wolverine is fairly new in circulation, but it doesn’t seem like it’s any different from the rest. Posted by u/Matsjee, he calls to stop the people creating these ads, and I might agree with him.

The actor playing the Wolverine character starts off by talking to the camera, red in the face, wide-eyed, and open-mouthed. What an obnoxious start to the video. He jumps into the middle of an objective, and all the enemies are magically grouped up where Wolverine can hit them all at the same time. In 3 seconds he defeats 4 enemies and takes a moment to look directly at the camera to rave about how good his character is. The way he’s actively commenting on the gameplay makes him seem like a poor caricature of some popular Twitch streamer, instead of some random dude recording himself reading a script in his office.

He then chases down Jeff, after asserting that Wolverine is the main character in this game, and finds that he can’t attack Jeff who is swimming under the ground. He gets frustrated and turns into a tomato before Jeff uses his ultimate. We then see a very similar scene to the last ad where Jeff yeets him off an edge. But, earlier in the video, we see that Wolverine clearly has the ability to leap and dive to safety. Why didn’t our main character try to use that ability to escape? Could it be that Jeff is the actual hero of the story? The Actor’s expressions and head movements are so exaggerated I feel like I’m watching children’s programming on T.V. It’s got the fourth-wall breaks, the bright colors, and simple narrative. Yet, I would rather watch Cocomelon episodes back to back than this ad.

“Us Against The World!”

These ads are designed to be attention-grabbing amongst those with the worst attention spans. As a result, they come off way too strong to people who don’t need loud noises and shiny objects to focus on something. I don’t even mean to be knocking on our ADHD friends with this statement, I actually think these ads are extremely insulting to them as well. These ads must be tailored to children, but NetEase can’t admit that’s who they’re marketing to because they’re not allowed to have kids as a core audience. But, everyone knows it anyway.

It only makes sense. People of all ages can enjoy comic books and superheroes, but kids find it especially easy. And look at the actors in these videos, they are set up to look like youtubers or streamers with the same style of active commentary and over-the-top reactions. Companies understand that when kids outgrow Paw Patrol and Dora, they move straight to Youtube and similar platforms. As a result, they will endlessly try to appeal to the increasing generations of kids who are raised exclusively online. Unfortunately, if Netease wants to continuously undermine the strengths of their game by churning out low-quality ads for viral engagement, we might have to sit back and let them.

Hopefully, the marketing team might adapt their strategy based on the backlash from the community, but it’s hard to say. If I’ve missed anything, let me know with a comment below. Or, if you’re looking for a way to reduce the impact of late-night screen-time on your eyes.