Marvel Rivals season 9.5 will finally address a growing issue with NetEase's hero shooter

Bigger is not better when it comes to file size

One of the biggest problems with live-service titles is how much storage they take up. It might not be bad when a game is first released, but over months and even years of content updates, the file size can balloon. With the next Marvel Rivals update, developer NetEase Games is looking to address that issue.

Season 9.5 of the hero shooter is set to be released on Aug. 7. Players will likely be most excited about the new wave of swimsuit skins the season brings, or perhaps the addition of The Hood as the game's next hero. And while both of those features are exciting, there is a less flashy improvement to the game that season 9.5 brings that fans are sure to be thankful for. NetEase announced that Marvel Rivals' upcoming update will implement a massive overhaul to how the game handles texture compression. NetEase said during a season 9.5 stream that this overhaul would be implemented "without sacrificing a single pixel of visual fidelity."

Marvel Rivals currently requires about 73 GB of space on consoles and roughly 100 GB on PC. Season 9.5 will reduce the console file by 15 GB and the PC file by 40 GB. That's a pretty respectable reduction for console players and an astounding nearly 50% reduction on PC. With storage space constantly at a premium these days because game files are so large, this is nothing to sneeze at. When Marvel Rivals was released in 2024, the game took up roughly 40 GB on consoles and about 70 GB on PC. That means season 9.5's texture compression overhaul brings both versions closer to the size they were at launch, or even smaller in the case of PC.

The only downside of the massive overhaul is that the season 9.5 install will actually be bigger than the typical Marvel Rivals update because it has to completely repackage the game's assets. This may be a little inconvenient for players who want to dive into season 9.5's new content as soon as possible, but it'll be beneficial in the long run to get that reduced file size.