Marvel Rivals offers a lot of awesome-looking skins for players to earn or buy for its various heroes and villains. And some of the hero shooter’s cool outfits can now be tweaked with new colors, but you’ll have to pay about $6 a pop to repaint skins, even ones you already bought.
Since launching late last year, the free-to-play Marvel Rivals from NetEase has been a massive hit across console and PC. Not a big enough hit to avoid layoffs, though. And now, following the recent launch of season two and the addition of Emma Frost to the game’s roster, NetEase has added a previously announced recoloring system for some skins. But ink ain’t free kids, and you’ll have to spend a new currency to swap colors.
On April 16, Marvel Rivals confirmed that after a small patch, players would be able to start recoloring certain skins. People were excited about this. On social media, a web browser (?) was pumped about this and cheered on NetEase for not charging $20 like “that other game” would have done. And then, on Thursday, after the update was live, NetEase dropped the bad news: Recoloring costumes will cost “600 Unstable Molecules.”
If you play Marvel Rivals, you might be confused. What the hell are Unstable Molecules? Well, they’re a new currency added to the game that appears to be used exclusively for unlocking new color options. For those keeping track at home, there are now at least five currencies in Rivals. (Units, Lattice, Chrono Tokens, Costume Coins and now these molecules.)
Currently, the only way to get more Unstable Molecules is by converting Lattice, a premium-only currency, into the new color-changing currency. The exchange rate is 1:1 and 600 Lattice costs $6. And while you can earn small amounts of Lattice for free, it will take you a long time to get 600.
NetEase promises there will be more ways to earn Unstable Molecules in Season 3, but for now you’ll have to pay up if you want to tweak how Magik’s punk skin looks.
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