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Three Spider-Man characters on a roof together in Marvel Rivals.
Screenshot by Dot Esports

‘It’s by design’: NICKMERCS thinks you’re losing Marvel Rivals games because of an age-old gaming complaint

Similar complaints have been made about every single competitive title ever.

Marvel Rivals, like any other competitive game, has an underlying system whose aim is to match players as fairly and quickly as possible. However, those can sometimes miss the mark, and streamer NIKMERCS thinks the devs purposely rig the system to keep you playing non-stop.

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He said this and more in a Feb. 4 clip shared by Marvel Rivals Intel on X. “The way this shit works,” NICKMERCS said, “is when you win too many times in a row… your account gets flagged,” and places you with “dumbasses and the morons” or in a loser’s queue of sorts. On the other hand, losing too much bumps you up into better queues where your odds of winning are higher, according to the streamer. “Don’t defend Marvel Rivals devs like you’re one of them,” he said to a commenter telling him to “stop yapping,” before finally asserting that what he was saying was true.

Emma frost splash image with her diamond skin featured.
Competitive games are often accused of having skill-based matchmaking, which some say is unfair by design. Image via Marvel

“This is exactly what they do, it’s by design to keep you on the game longer,” the streamer added, claiming that the only way to beat this supposed system was to carry your bad teams to victory and become so good at the game that the system cannot harm you.

It’s not the first time that a competitive game has been accused of having some sort of skill-based matchmaking by a prominent player. Across the board, any sort of game featuring a rank system has seen accusations and conspiracies of their being “rigged” to either make you lose or win, all with the goal of increasing player retention.

From League of Legends to Counter-Strike to Dota 2 and SMITE, nearly every single game that has ever had a competitive design has seen the same accusations that NIKMERCS threw at Marvel Rivals, and it’s going to keep happening so long as competition has anything to do with any of the games above.


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