Marvel Rivals' latest update quietly killed the game's burgeoning mod scene

First reported by IGN, it appears that Marvel Rivals' season one update has disabled mods in the game. Until now, there was actually a surprisingly lively scene [[link]] of modders creating skins and other cosmetic additions for the NetEase hero shooter.

Users in the Marvel Rivals Discord have said that the update has introduced asset hash checking to prevent client-side modification of the game's files. There was no mention of this change in the season one patch notes, but that's probably because NetEase never saw modding as a legitimate player behavior: Modding is verboten according to the game's terms of use, and NetEase told IGN that players who mod their Marvel Rivals installations risk being banned.

It's kind [[link]] of a bummer to see, but this felt inevitable⁠—it was far more weird to see a free-to-play, cosmetics-driven, live service multiplayer game allow [[link]] cosmetic mods in the first place. Client-side skin mods are largely harmless, but competitive games are understandably skittish about any backdoor to creating an unfair advantage. It takes me back to a more innocent time though: I remember when weapon skins were something you downloaded for free in Counter-Strike Source, as opposed to gaudy, multi-thousand dollar proto-NFTs.

This also makes for a rather pathetic coda to the story of those modders whose Trump and Biden skins for Captain America were removed from the Nexus⁠—all that Sturm and Drang, and now there are just no mods anyway for Marvel Rivals. The update isn't all bad news though: Alongside a number of balance changes and new maps, season one is seeing the addition of the entire Fantastic Four to Marvel Rivals' roster, starting with Reed Richards and Sue Storm.