Marvel Snap adds new cosmetics for up to $15 per card—and players are furious

Marvel Snap’s latest game update added a long-requested feature to the card battler, but all it’s done is piss everyone off.

Piggybacking off of the new custom card feature, there are now nine completely new card border variations that players can purchase to equip to a card. The problem is they’re pricey and restricted to just one character.

The new Marvel Snap card borders are pretty badass. They come in Metallic (Copper, Gold, and Silver) and Neon (Blue, Green, Purple, Red, White, and Yellow) variations, but their price tags are sending card gamers into a tizzy. All previous borders in the game have been earned through upgrading cards.

The new borders range in price from 500 Gold to 900 Gold, meaning the priciest variants are $15. And that’s $15 per border, per card, meaning that collecting multiple borders for multiple cards would run up the price quite quickly. And fans are not happy.

The free-to-play game has come under fire many times for its aggressive monetization, and the replies to the announcement of the newest addition on Twitter/X were just as vitriolic this time around.

“Paying for a border color per character is insane,” one player said. “This game is getting ridiculous.”

The feature is purely cosmetic, so no one is forced to buy anything. But the pricing is steep, regardless of need or want. As always, players can vote with their wallets, but aggressive spenders known as “whales” will most likely offset anything that can be done by boycotting. And so, more monetization methods are likely on the way regardless.

I will likely only purchase a border for a card split that perfectly suits it, or maybe I won’t. I don’t know. At the end of the day, the player has a choice in what they spend their money on, just as the developer chooses what to monetize. And in our free-to-play world, stuff like this has become commonplace.