Editor’s note: Over the weekend social media was stunned to confront new characters skins for the Marvel Rivals game, specifically a Captain America who is not just America’s Ass but America’s….other body parts.
Gifs of the character in action captivated posters throughout the holiday, as Cap jiggled and bulged. But what is the real story here? Beat contributor and Marvel Rivals player Jared Bird has the lowdown
Marvel Rivals, NetEase Games‘ wildly popular free-to-play superhero shooter, has absolutely dominated in online spaces since it’s launch in 2024. Launching niche Marvel Comics characters like Luna Snow, White Fox, Devil Dinosaur and Elsa Bloodstone into the spotlight, whilst giving plenty of love to established characters like Deadpool, Captain America, Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four, the game has been a huge success both economically and socially, leading to a consistent and passionate playerbase that has a lot of love for what the game has to offer.
Every year, Marvel Rivals goes through different story events titled Seasons, with each one featuring different cosmetic costumes (also known as ‘skins’) available for purchase for various characters. Some of these are available for free by unlocking in-game currency, which is obtained by completing missions, events and set tasks within the timeframe limitation of the season. However, some skins are only available through a financial commitment, based on purchasing items such as the ‘Battle Pass’ which additionally makes the season’s cosmetics and unlockables available after it ends. The current season, 8.5, Sins of Alchemax, features the return of Marvel Rivals‘ annual summer event, which sees the release of swimsuit-related cosmetics for various characters.
However, this year’s event, which runs from June 18th all the way until July 30th, has featured the release of some cosmetics that are… interesting, to say the least. Generating much chatter online, heroes such Emma Frost, Doctor Strange, Loki and White Fox have received swimsuit skins available through a lootbox-like system of ‘pop-and-win’. This system involves paying in-game currency for the chance to pop a balloon and win an unlockable; thus, you could get the skin in as little as one go, but more times than not, you will likely have to spend enough to get the full six turns in order to unlock it.
These skins are joined by others who are unlocked through partaking in various minigames, such as the fishing minigame Krakoan Reels, where the amount of fish caught and the rarity of the fish (decided in part by your success in the minigame) contributes to what your available to purchase. Some of the skins available here require a paid upgrade, such as skins for Mister Fantastic, Cloak & Dagger and Spider-Man
Lastly, you have skins where you purchase them the conventional way, through the store directly with in-game currency, which you can easily acquire through in-game micro-transactions if you don’t have enough to purchase it already. With new skins being revealed frequently during this event, there may still be more yet to come, but it’s fair to say that the skins already available have already incited much chatter and controversy in online spaces
There’s no professional way to put this, but many of the skins are quite out-there in terms of their visual content, regardless of whether the character is male or female. Arguably, that’s a significant improvement over previous years, in which the bulk of the skins were targeted towards female characters. There’s something to be said about the cheesecake element of superhero comics historically, and how Marvel Rivals is simply following in that tradition, but it’s quite striking when you first see it, and can come across as particularly shocking for a game with a 12 rating in the United Kingdom and a T in the United States.
In-game, many of these character skins look great, and are modelled well from a technical standpoint. An interesting addition is what some might refer to as ‘jiggle’ physics, in which character’s bodyparts, including the obvious and the not-as-obvious, move in tandem with the model moving direction. You could endlessly debate the nature of these skins, and whether they’re trashy or tasteful, but the truth is that it’s all relative and very much down to a personal opinion. What someone might find crass and uncomfortable, others might find fun and enticing; and ultimately, Marvel Rivals relishes in their popularity, and the economic success linked to it, so they have every reason to make sure we keep talking.
Publicly, opinions seem divided. Some have voiced their enjoyment of the silliness and ridiculous quality of the skins, seeing iconic superheroes in funny and unexpected ways, with a bit of a raunchy quality thrown in. This includes legendary and controversial comics creator Rob Liefield, who voiced his appreciation for the much-discussed Captain America Seaside Sentinel skin, complete with very noticeable, and debatably quite uncomfortable, appendages. Like previous years, the Summer Special cosmetics have come under significant scrutiny for sexualising major characters, coming off as insensitive or at worst, outright misogynistic, and of course, for approaching the boundary of what is appropriate to suggest in a widely available game, whose userbase consists in large part of teenagers and young adults. Regardless, it appears to be a tradition they will continue to do; perhaps next may tone it back down in response to some of the criticism, or perhaps not, only time will tell.
