When Blizzard Entertainment had Monitoring First playable to the general public at Gamescom in 2015, I queued up with a swarm of attendees and waited hours to get my hands on the game. I liked what I played. So much so, in fact, that I played a good chunk of the game when it released. And I’ve been craving a similar hero shooter ever since. Marvel’s Rivals has more or less scratched that itch with its 6v6 format and lack of role queuing, reminiscent of the early days of Monitoringbut it’s a shame that I can’t get a key for the closed beta through the Twitch Drops campaign, because I would really like to play with my friends.
My take on the matter is not unpopular. Reddit is full of users complaining about the poor quality of the closed beta key rollout, with bots flooding the trading page every 17 hours PST/00 hours UTC. As of July 27, 2024, eBay is full of keys that can be purchased for between $30 and $100, which is steep for a closed beta. But given that you’ll be able to unlock an exclusive Venom skin that’s reminiscent of his color scheme from Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and the desire of players after the closed beta to show off their participation in this limited test, it doesn’t surprise me that keys are being scooped up and sold for profit.
I’ll give you a quick overview of how these keys are acquired. You can look at any Marvel’s Rivals Stream on Twitch for one hour and be eligible to get a key. Keys are distributed through the Marvel’s Rivals website, assuming you’re lucky enough to get one. Every time a new key distribution period starts, the page where you can get your keys is slow. Sometimes it logs you out of your Twitch account, meaning you have to spend a few seconds or a minute logging back in, or you have to go through a CAPTCHA. All of these things mean that you probably won’t get a key for the closed beta.
If you’re lucky enough to get a key, you’ll only be able to redeem one via the game client for the entire duration of the closed beta. Keys also disappear particularly quickly, with 20-14% of them being redeemable within about a minute of the key swaps going live. Which is a shame. Because if you’re not logged in at the exact moment the swaps are refreshed, you’re probably not going to get a key.
And playing Hero Shooters without your friends is no fun. I mean, I’ve definitely queued solo Marvel’s Rivals enough to get me through more than half of the Battle Pass and reach the Cyan Venom skin during my three days with the closed beta. But when even one of my friends had access, I had a lot more fun. And even more so when two and then three could jump into the game. We would queue up together and think about team synergy. We would have fun and work together to surround enemies so that I could swallow them as Jeff the Shark and spit four opposing players out of the map! It was awesome! And it took a lot of coordination to pull it off. I’m sure you can do it by communicating in-game with strangers, but there’s a lot of fun to be had with friends.
These types of games have become social activities, ways for friends to spend time together abroad, or even just a handful of matches to satisfy their desire for carnage – or their desire for something like Monitoring it’s not Monitoring. This is me, I am that person. And I want to be able to involve my friends in this game so they can also experience the really cool moments that I have in the game. Because I want to involve them in this adventure, and I think the way the closed beta keys are distributed makes that really difficult, and can even leave a bitter taste in the mouths of those who can’t participate.
I will probably play Marvel’s Rivals when it comes out. That’s my kind of silliness. But I feel really bad for the people who were looking forward to it, or even spent time watching streams and won’t be able to participate. Because who knows, maybe they’ll feel burned enough to not play the game.
Marvel Rivals is currently in closed beta on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
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