Marvel Rivals immediately saw a huge launch with over 440,000 concurrent players on Steam alone.

NetEase’s free-to-play Marvel hero shooter saw a peak number of 444,286 concurrent players on the Valve platform. But the actual concurrent number will be much higher considering Marvel Rivals was also released on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S (Sony and Microsoft don’t release player numbers).

It also seems to be doing well on Steam, with a “mostly positive” user rating from over 5,700 reviews (76% of reviews are positive). Check out IGN’s ongoing Marvel Rivals review to find out what we think.

NetEase not only hopes to keep Marvel Rivals’ player count as high as possible for as long as possible (which has proven particularly difficult with live service games lately), but also to make enough money from players to to achieve the company’s internal sales forecasts. To this end, Marvel Rivals sells a Battle Pass and premium skins. But is it worth it? The game currently sits third on Steam’s top sellers list by revenue, behind only the pricey Steam Deck and Grinding Gear Games’ Path of Exile 2. This suggests that Marvel Rivals is already convincing players to take their Open wallets.

Marvel Rivals started alongside Season 0 with the title “Dooms’ Rise”. This month-long inaugural season begins with a total of 33 heroes, all free to play, eight Quick Play and Competitive mode maps, a Conquest map, and a Training Grounds. “Dooms’ Rise” serves as the opening chapter “to the chaos caused by each of Doctor Dooms’ time experiments colliding and triggering the timestream entanglement,” NetEase said.

There’s a Twitch Drops event for Season 0, as you’d expect from a live service game of this nature, a seasonal Entangled Moments event to unlock spray rewards, gallery card rewards, and stories for completing Tasks, as well as a global starting gift: a special code for a free Iron Man costume.

Wesley is the UK news editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].