The term “pay to win” is typically attributed to competitive games with microtransactions that give players an edge in battle. An example would be an item you can buy that makes your character more powerful than that of someone who didn’t cough up real money. However, some Marvel Rivals fans are throwing the derogatory label onto the hero shooter because of a bug that’s giving some users an unexpected advantage in fights. While you could argue that this situation has folks throwing around the phrase “pay to win” a little too liberally, the bug in question is certainly one that should be addressed by developer NetEase.
Fans have realized that when Marvel Rivals is running at lower framerates, some hero abilities do less damage or are generally less efficient than they are at higher framerates. In other words, if you’re playing the shooter on a high-end PC that can run the game at a higher framerate, you’ll find your enemies will take more damage from certain attacks than they would if you were playing on a machine that runs the game at a lower framerate. Other idiosyncrasies include certain attacks executing more quickly, or seemingly losing range at lower framerates. The reason some fans are calling this “pay to win” is because if you can afford a beefier PC, you can circumvent the issue entirely.
Currently, this bug is known to impact five characters: Star-Lord, Wolverine, Doctor Strange, Magik, and Spider-Man. At the moment, this is a bigger problem for players on PC than on console, as those all play at the same framerate across the board. However, Marvel Rivals is crossplay, which means you could be teamed up with a PC player affected by this, so it’s a problem for everyone until it’s fixed.
Marvel Rivals has received a few patches that have primarily focused on bug fixes, so that seems to be top of mind for the team. Now that this issue has been discovered, hopefully NetEase will be looking into a fix. For more on Marvel Rivals, check out Kotaku’s review.