NYC Man Calls Marvel Rivals Racist After Two Black Chaarcters Were Introduced in Jail: ‘This Is All This Evidence I’ve Brought Up’

Marvel Rivals is under fire from one man in NYC. He says that the game is racist because of a clear pattern of treatment for two Black characters.

There’s been a lot of chatter about Marvel Rivals on the Internet lately. Most of that is due to some fun costume shenanigans. But, this story is on the other end of the spectrum. On TikTok, @lich_reaper decided to take a look at how the game decided to introduce Moon Girl in jail. And, mentioning how Blade was introduced in chains. The TikToker basically gestured towards a larger pattern of neglect for the Black characters in Marvel Rivals.

Blade, Moon Girl, Storm, Black Panther, and Cloak comprise the Black characters present in Marvel Rivals so far. The skins and other cosmetics for these Marvel heroes have been lacking. Especially in a game like Marvel Rivals, where the customization of the characters has been such a selling point. A lot of the online chatter around the game swirls around revealing skins and other cool nods to the long publishing history of the Marvel heroes. But, that’s nowhere to be found with these prominent additions.

One of the most interesting points that @lich_reaper brings up is how many more skins Cloak has than others on this list. Yes, Cloak and Dagger are the sort of “fan-favorite” duo that was going to attract some love. But, it’s undoubtedly funny that a Black hero paired with a white one is getting more support consistently than other Marvel heroes with massive fanbases in their own right.

Before this game launched, could you have imagined a scenario where Cloak and Dagger had more skins than freaking Storm from the X-Men? Probably not! But, here we are anyway. It’s hard to call Marvel Rivals explicitly racist. And, even harder to pin down the full scope of what their thought process is here. However, the pattern explained in this video is tough to mount an argument against.

Black Characters in Marvel Rivals & Race

These sorts of concerns have been bubbling amongst the Black playerbase for Marvel Rivals for a while now. The fact that there are other voices speaking up shows how apparent the conversation is at this point. NetEase has done little to address all the chatter. And, it seems like they’re content to let that all ride for the time being.

Not too long ago, Kotaku sat down with NetEase’s head of marketing, Yachen Bian, to discuss how the spicier skins have become a big part of what they do. To let them tell it, this was never really the plan to begin with. But, once fans started to react to these releases, the choice became obvious.

“We didn’t do that kind of content on purpose. We also didn’t want to let it become a technique for us to attract users,” Bian explained. “That is not the philosophy of the game. It is a fact that we have some audience for this kind of flavor. But [if you look at something like] the swimsuit collection, they were actually from the Marvel Universe itself. 

“We concentrate on how we can bring the authentic Marvel experience to players,” she added. “We did that and found out that some players like it, and some don’t. But we do feel like that is how we make the game, and we’ll just stick to that philosophy, and let the results be results.”  

That may work for the sexy skin discourse. But unfortunately, the results on the Black characters are there loud and clear as well. We’ll have to see how it changes.

(Photo Credit: NetEase)

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]