Your PC isn’t broken—Marvel Rivals really is eating your RAM for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. NetEase Games’ superhero shooter has been gobbling up memory like Galactus at an all-you-can-eat planet buffet since launch.
But there’s genuine hope on the horizon. During GDC 2025, game director Guangyun Chen dropped a bombshell that has RAM-starved players everywhere breathing a collective sigh of relief.
The days of needing 32GB of RAM just to keep Doctor Strange from turning your match into a slideshow presentation might finally be coming to an end. But will this fix actually deliver, or is it just another empty promise?
The RAM-devouring beast might finally be tamed
Anyone who’s played Marvel Rivals knows the drill by now: launch the game, enjoy smooth gameplay for ten minutes, watch helplessly as your RAM usage climbs to 90%, and pray your system doesn’t crash when someone picks Doctor Strange. It’s practically a ritual at this point.
The Unreal Engine 5-powered hero shooter has developed quite the appetite for system memory. Even PCs with the recommended 16GB of RAM struggle to keep up, with the game often demanding 20GB+ during intense firefights.
But, according to PC Gamer‘s interview with Marvel Rivals director Guangyun Chen at the 2025 Game Developers Conference, these memory usage-related woes may finally be overcome in Season 2:
On PC, we realize that [optimization] is a big problem, especially for the memory consumption. So it may be that in Season 2, we will have an experimental check box in our launcher players can use to reduce memory [consumption] significantly.
This is music to the ears of players who’ve been watching their systems choke whenever Doctor Strange opens a portal or Magneto decides to fling every metal object on the map. These moments transform even high-end rigs into glorified PowerPoint presentations.
However, Chen was quick to temper expectations about the timeline:
It’s a very big problem, but it’s a lot of work to organize [a fix]. We cannot just release it in a small patch, we have to fully test it. But we realize the problem and we’re going to keep optimizing.
So while the checkbox is planned for Season 2 (launching April 11), there’s no guarantee it’ll make the cut. NetEase clearly understands they can’t afford to lose players with modest hardware, but fixing the issue isn’t as simple as flipping a switch.
The growing pains of a new engine
The memory issues plaguing Marvel Rivals aren’t entirely surprising when you consider the game’s foundation. Unreal Engine 5 is notorious for its hefty system requirements, and many developers are still learning its quirks.
Chen acknowledged these challenges in the same interview:
It’s hard for all developers to use the engine and make it good. It’s a new engine for us. We have a lot of hard work [ahead] to optimize it.
This candid admission explains why even players with beefy rigs experience stuttering when certain heroes unleash their abilities. It’s not just your imagination—Human Torch and Storm really do tank everyone’s framerate with their “FIRESTORM!” ultimate.
What’s particularly refreshing about NetEase’s approach is their willingness to admit the problem exists. Rather than insisting players upgrade their hardware or pretending the issues don’t exist, they’re actively working on solutions.
The question remains whether this mysterious checkbox will actually deliver meaningful improvements or just slightly delay the inevitable RAM-pocalypse that occurs mid-match. Either way, it’s a step in the right direction for a game that has otherwise been winning hearts despite its technical hiccups.
What’s your experience been with Marvel Rivals‘ performance? Has your system been brought to its knees by memory issues, or are you one of the lucky few with smooth gameplay? Share your specs and stories in the comments!
This post belongs to FandomWire and first appeared on FandomWire
