Marvel Rivals has been doing so unbelievably well and has been bombarding players with so much new content already that the launch of its actual first season seems almost irrelevant. Of course, there’s a lot to be excited about with Marvel Rivals Season 1 – The Fantastic Four are here, there’s a new map, and there’s a fresh battle pass to grind. However, there is one very big change brought about in the Season 1 update that’s going to make a lot of you pretty sad – mods have been completely wiped out.
Prior to the launch of Marvel Rivals Season 1, mods were heavily frowned upon by developer NetEase and could land you with account bans. Nevertheless, they were still able to be used in the free PC game and have become incredibly popular. Mostly, Marvel Rivals mods have been used to create custom skins to transform heroes into, well, whoever you want. Among the most popular mods, you’ll find Iron Man turned into Vegeta from Dragon Ball, The Punisher morphed into Big Smoke from GTA San Andreas, and a suspicious amount of ‘goth mommy’ skins…
However, following the launch of Season 1, there have been reports of players’ mods not working at all in-game. Despite there being no mention of it in the update’s patch notes, it appears some new measures have been rolled out to detect and disable any mods. Marvel Rivals dataminer ‘XOXLeak’ claims that “asset hash checking” has been added, which scans game files to check that they are NetEase-created and approved.
Maybe another workaround will be found in time and mods will reappear, but this sounds like it’s the end of the line for custom characters. Your days of playing as Batman Moon Knight or Skibidi Toilet Jeff are over.
This is hardly a surprising move from NetEase. The developer has been very clear on its stance on mods and altering game files – it was just lacking the tech to properly banish them. While I’m sure NetEase has still profited handsomely from skin sales already in Marvel Rivals, mods could be used as a way to change your character’s appearance without forking out or grinding for it in-game, and that just can’t stand in a free-to-play title.
While you mourn the loss of your custom mods, here are some amazing Marvel Rivals skins you can check out instead – official ones, this time. You can also check out all the current and upcoming Marvel Rivals events planned for the game.
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