Joshua Robertson is a News Editor for TheGamer. When not writing about breaking news, community stories, or covering industry events, you can find him begging FromSoftware for a Bloodborne remaster.
Marvel Rivals has managed to keep players fairly happy when it comes to the monetization side of things, with only a handful of events causing a bit of a stir over things like unfair pricing. NetEase has done a pretty good job on that front, making players feel like they’re getting their money’s worth in a game that is essentially fueled by its in-game microtransactions.
However, you can always trust a big game publisher to take things a step too far, and NetEase has now come under fire from fans over essentially adding gacha mechanics to Marvel Rivals for Psylocke’s new Daring Daifuku skin. To obtain the skin, players need to pop a series of balloons on a board that will each give you a random reward. Every time you pop a balloon, the price to pop the next one increases, meaning you can grab the skin for either 100 Units if you’re lucky, or 2,400 if you’re not.
Marvel Rivals Fans Are Upset Over Psylocke Gacha Skin
Since a legendary skin and emoji bundle in Marvel Rivals usually costs around 2,400 Units anyway, it’s not really true gacha, but the skin is being distributed in a very gacha-esque system. The chance of getting the Psylocke skin on your first or second balloon is just 5 and 11 percent respectively, and there will undoubtedly be many players out there that have less than 2,400 Units that will throw them all away for the chance of getting the Psylocke skin on the cheap.
Marvel Rivals’ current season is all about love, but so far, there have been no references to the queer couples in Marvel.
Understandably, a lot of fans think that this is NetEase attempting to soft launch gacha mechanics into Marvel Rivals on a more regular basis, just like how it has with its other titles, most recently Where Winds Meet. In a Reddit post by user PhilosopherOk1583, you can already find several Marvel Rivals fans irritated with how the skin is being distributed, with the OP claiming that this is the first time they’ve “actually been let down by Rival’s monetization scheme.”
Other complaints include people accusing NetEase of not clearly displaying the odds of getting the skin, with some assuming it would be a one in six chance rather than a five percent chance that rises with each popped balloon. Another user called Danica_Rose says that the whole event has “tarnished my feelings about NetEase as a whole”, while a user called Daizo678 calls the system “pure gambling.”
Of course, none of this is particularly new for those that are familiar with how gacha works, but considering Marvel Rivals has been selling almost all of its cosmetics outright, you can understand why this new system would cause concern, especially if NetEase decides to take it a step further. For now, it just appears to be testing the waters, but if a bunch of money is dumped into the NetEase bank account thanks to this system, it’s possible we could see it return in the future.
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