Marvel Rivals dev confirms heroes will release twice as fast as Overwatch 2

Marvel Rivals’ Game Director has revealed how often we can expect new heroes to be added to the game, and it blows Overwatch out of the water.

Although Marvel Rivals only officially arrived at the end of 2024, the roster of characters has already grown significantly. Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman came with the Season 1 update, with The Thing and Human Torch rounding out the Fantastic Four with the mid-season update.

This has left many players wondering if the devs can keep up the same blistering pace, and although they confirmed that future seasons won’t be as stacked as Season 1, the hero lineup is still set to expand at an impressive rate.

Marvel Rivals to release new heroes twice per season

Speaking in an interview with Metro, Marvel Rivals Game Director, Guangyun Chen, confirmed that they aim to release a new character every month and a half. This means that there will be two additional heroes introduced with each season.

“Every season we’ll be rolling out fresh seasonal stories, new maps, and new heroes. We’ll actually be breaking down each season into two halves,” he explained. “The length of one season is three months. And for each half of the season, we will introduce a new hero.

“We just eventually want to continue to enhance the experience, and, you know, keep everyone excited in our community.”

NetEase Games

This adds up to eight new heroes every 12 months. Meanwhile, Overwatch, which many consider to be the closest analog and main competitor to Marvel Rivals, only drops a new hero every two roughly every four months, equating to around three in the same timeframe.

So, if NetEase can keep sticking to this schedule, they’ll be fleshing out their lineup at more than double the rate of Overwatch 2. This could see Rivals overtake Overwatch in terms of playable characters by 2026.

This will no doubt please Marvel Rivals players, as the arrival of new heroes always brings plenty of excitement and changes to the meta, just like we saw with Season 1. However, the news might cause concern for Overwatch fans, who have already seen interest in the game take a hit since the new hero shooter burst on the scene.