Marvel Rivals Marvel Zombies, the first-ever PvE mode, arrived at the right time.
The new addition to the online shooter debuted on October 23 (a slap in the middle of the spooky season) almost a year after surpassing 40 million players within 72 hours of its December 2024 launch. It will be removed on November 14th, which means you still have a couple of weeks to try it out.
During a recent chat at Gamescom Asia x Thai Game Show, Marvel Games executive producer Danny Koo told Game Developer that Marvel Rivals The player base remains “healthy”, which begs the question: why waste time and resources developing a new limited-time PvE game mode (other than the obvious overlap with the recent Marvel Zombies animated series) when the core PvP experience remains in good shape?
According to Koo, the goal of Marvel Zombies—and PvE in general—is to offer players a respite from the intensity of competitive play. “WITH Rivals Since this is primarily a PvP game, we needed an additional mode to reduce the pressure of being competitive every minute,” says Koo.
He explains that the development team wanted to create a PvE mode from the beginning, but were happy to wait for the right opportunity. The chance came after a conversation with the Marvel Animation team, who explained that they had been tasked with developing a Marvel Zombies series. After watching the show, Ku realized that the idea of a world overrun by red-eyed cannon fodder was perfect for a PvE experience.
Koo explains that Netease Games views Marvel Zombies as a mini-game designed to pack a strong punch without overshadowing the core PvP experience. It took about six months of work to bring this regime to life. Initially, a small strike team was assembled to piece together a gray box prototype that would help the team understand how many players it could support, as well as the inner workings of PvE level design.
For example, the core PvP mode supports six players per team, but it was important to understand whether this would translate into a PvE offering that included kinetic hordes of enemies. Ku explains that the next step was to figure out how AI opponents would behave – and, as a result, which hero characters would be good for PvE. The end result is a co-op mode that supports up to four players and five heroes in Thor, Blade, Magik, Jeff the Land Shark and Punisher modes.
“Each player is valuable because of geography, the nature of the game and how they team up with others.”
A couple of these characters were included to overlap with the series. Others were intentional wild cards. “Some of the characters were chosen because it made thematic sense, especially characters from the series because they have great new costumes that we can show off. Others were simply fan favorites, like Jeff the Land Shark. “He has nothing to do here, but it's just fun to see what happens if you set a shark on a zombie,” says Koo. “Then you have the Punisher, who is like a regular military man defending himself against zombies.”
These characters have been redesigned with expanded skills and a new upgrade system to ensure they can effectively handle the massive hordes of undead that will swarm players in Marvel Zombies. Koo says figuring out how these undead masses should attack players was also important to determining the ebbs and flows of the gameplay. Ultimately, the team settled on fast-moving mobs that can confuse players and included strong bosses like Namor and Scarlet Witch to bolster the challenge.
Koo believes that players will learn a lot about themselves and their peers based on how they behave when the walls start closing in, but notes that the difficulty curve has been fine-tuned to ensure that Marvel Zombies remains an enjoyable experience rather than a suffocating time.
“You can play Marvel Zombies alone or even in a team, so I think this mode will show players who you really are beyond the competition. Whether you want to collaborate, whether you care about other teammates, or whether you want to be a lone wolf,” he says.
The development team is also keen to observe player behavior, and Koo emphasizes the importance of ensuring that all players – be they big spenders or those putting “free” into a free-to-play game – feel like there's value in sticking around for the long haul. Ultimately, the thinking goes, Marvel Zombies will give them another reason to sink their teeth into a game that Koo hopes will still be popular a decade from now.
“When you see a player who comes – even if he doesn't pay – to have fun, he creates competition for other players. Each player is valuable because of geography, the nature of the game, and how they team up with others. This allows us to see what their interests are and how we can create content that suits them,” says Koo. “And because it's not a pay-to-win game, all of our heroes are free, we can see that pure participation. Even if no one pays, it’s pure participation.”
The game developer participated in the Gamescom Asia x Thai Game Show 2025 as a media partner, with tickets and accommodation paid for by the event organizers.
