Marvel Rivals to Reduce File Size While Preserving Visual Quality

One of the major challenges with live-service games is their ever-increasing storage demands. Initially, a game’s file size might seem manageable, but as months and years pass with continuous updates, it can swell significantly. With the upcoming update for Marvel Rivals, the developers are tackling this issue head-on.

Season 9.5 is set to launch on August 7, and players are likely buzzing about the new swimsuit skins and the introduction of The Hood as the latest hero. While these features are certainly exciting, there’s a less glamorous yet crucial enhancement that fans will appreciate. The developers have announced a significant overhaul to the game’s texture compression, promising that this change will be made “without sacrificing a single pixel of visual fidelity.”

Currently, Marvel Rivals occupies around 73 GB on consoles and about 100 GB on PC. With the arrival of Season 9.5, the console version will see a reduction of 15 GB, while the PC version will shrink by an impressive 40 GB. This is a notable decrease for console players and an astonishing nearly 50% cut for PC users. Given the current climate of large game files, this is a welcome change. When Marvel Rivals launched in 2024, it required approximately 40 GB on consoles and around 70 GB on PC, meaning that the texture compression overhaul in Season 9.5 brings both versions closer to their original sizes, or even smaller for PC.

The only drawback to this extensive overhaul is that the Season 9.5 installation will be larger than typical updates, as it necessitates a complete repackaging of the game’s assets. This might be a slight inconvenience for players eager to jump into the new content right away, but the long-term benefits of a reduced file size will be worth it.

The demonic mobster enters the fight in Season 9.5.