Marvel Rivals devs allegedly baited leakers by planting fake heroes

It appears as though Marvel Rivals developers have been having some fun with leakers in the community. According to some of the most prominent insiders, devs have been faking hero information in order to trick those appearing to be in the know.

As with any big live-service game, there’s always the concern of leaking information. Blockbuster titles like Fortnite and Call of Duty are prime examples, with dataminers and insiders often spilling the beans on upcoming content well ahead of schedule.

In some cases, this information is simply relayed anonymously by those on the inside, though in many cases, intel can be acquired by sifting through a game’s files. Dataminers, as they’re known, are among the most prominent leakers in the modern era, as live-service game updates typically plant seeds early, laying the groundwork for more sizeable content drops to come.

Dataminers can then unearth these strings of code and publicize the findings. That’s exactly what’s been happening in the early outings with Marvel Rivals. While the game isn’t even two months old at the time of writing, leakers have already been keeping busy, revealing well over a dozen heroes they believed to be in the works.

Well, as it now turns out, while some of these heroes may indeed be legitimate, leakers are now concerned they’ve been led astray by none other than the Marvel Rivals devs themselves.

Marvel Rivals leakers allegedly caught out by fake heroes

Sharing a message in a popular Marvel Rivals Discord server, an admin addressed how much of the leaked intel thus far may actually be inaccurate.

“It has come to our attention that the devs have set up fake characters to catch leakers,” the announcement read. “Not only the ones in the code, but potentially inside sources too.”

For now, it is worth taking with a grain of salt as the admin later sought to clarify nothing is truly “100%”. However, they are nonetheless confident that many early discoveries are “very likely fake.”

This news quickly spread like wildfire across social media, with various dataminers all scurrying to provide evidence for their work. One in particular provided an in-depth look at all sorts of hero tags and ability strings in the game’s code, just to prove they “actually exist.”

Though as the concern grows, even if there is code in the game today that hints at something, there’s no guarantee devs didn’t just put it there to mess with leakers.

This is not a 100% confirmations that they are all coming or when they will come.
This is just to show off that these actually exist. 🧵

All Hero tags can be found in: Marvel/Content/Marvel/Data/DataTable/MarvelHeroTable

Ability Tables are to long to fit the screenshot, will… https://t.co/9uMZsQ8xK5 pic.twitter.com/g7oCnkunha

— VISCERAL (@zvis_ceral) January 23, 2025

According to the admin who first shared this news, the leaker community has rallied together and, to the best of their abilities, verified the legitimacy of 15 heroes in the pipeline. This includes the likes of the Fantastic Four, of which Season 1 is centered around, but others like Blade and Deadpool also made the cut here too.

Meanwhile, there are 13 heroes listed as ‘plants,’ characters that may have been intentionally dropped in as red herrings. These include the likes of Professor X, Beast, Quicksilver, and even Gambit.

Again, it’s a delicate situation with no guarantees, as, after all, devs can always change course along the way. But should the warnings hold true, there’s every chance the Marvel Rivals dev team is having some fun messing around with the community. We’ll be sure to update you here as we learn more about the situation.