What does C9 mean in Marvel Rivals?

Beyond sparking a wave of fresh memes, Marvel Rivals’ intense objective-based gameplay has resurrected one of esports’ most iconic blunders—the shocking “C9” mistake. If you’ve just encountered this reference and have no idea what it means, we have the answer for you.

As a team-based PvP game, Marvel Rivals is mostly too unpredictable: you’re as likely to win as you’re to lose. You’ll also play some highly winnable matches in your career, where, despite your team having all the advantage, you still end up losing. What’s worse is that you may see the enemy team spam “C9” in the match chat after such throws and wonder what made your team into a meme.

What is the C9 reference in Marvel Rivals?

“C9” refers to Cloud9, one of the most popular esports organizations in the world. But the meme we’re talking about is much more than just the team’s name: it’s a series of similar mistakes that cost C9 an important game—and its dignity on the internet—in the Overwatch Apex Season 2 tournament in 2017.

While playing against the Afreeca Freecs Blue, despite winning all the difficult mechanical fights, Cloud9 lost multiple rounds solely because they abandoned the objective. What’s funnier is that they proceeded to repeat the same mistake not once, but thrice in the same series. C9 lost an important series that day and cemented a permanent place for themselves among meme lovers of the esports fandom.

Despite its origin in Overwatch, the C9 meme has made its way into Marvel Rivals, which is also a lot about objectives. Whether it’s Convoy, Convergence, or Domination, you need to capture points and keep control over them to win matches. Unfortunately, players tend to forget what matters the most despite Galacta screaming her lungs off.

So, if you’ve lost a match because you or your teammates were too busy pushing into the enemy spawn and forgot to capture the point before moving out of it, congratulations—you’ve pulled off a classic C9 move.

Don’t beat yourself up about it, though. Between all the chaotic fights, confusing interactions, and everyone’s hunger to score MVP, such mistakes are sometimes inevitable in Rivals. That enemy mocking you now has probably made a C9, too, at some point in their career. 

To avoid making a C9 mistake, make sure you always play for the objective—even if you’ve just wiped the enemy team and scored an Ace. It also doubles up as the best tip you can get to win more games. Many players in my lobbies, especially duelists and tanks, tend to bite off more than they can chew, leaving the remaining players trying to hold the objective at a major disadvantage. So, do it for the win and not just to avoid being the meme.