Developer NetEase Games has announced a new feature for competitive shooter Marvel Rivals that will further allow players to customise their characters. The feature, Costume Customisation, allows players to change the colour combos on various characters directly in the Costumes tab. The feature will be available in an update today.
While the feature had fans of the games quite excited, the company has since revealed through a separate post on social media platform X that this new feature will not be available for free. Rather, players will have to pay 600 Unstable Molecules for costumes with customised colours. In its post, the company has stated that the exchange rate between Unstable Molecules and Lattice is 1:1.
This announcement has caught quite a bit of flak from fans of Marvel Rivals, since it essentially adds a new paywall on top of the already-present paywall for buying new costumes. As the company notes that the feature will only be available for a few costumes, players will have to first acquire a supported costume before they can then spend more money on changing its colour scheme.
“Customized Color Costumes will cost 600 Unstable Molecules for exchange,” posted to Marvel Rivals X account. “Unstable Molecules can be exchanged from Lattice at a 1:1 rate. You must first obtain the costumes before you can customize them. Initially, only a select few costumes will have this feature and we will expand more over time to other costumes.”
“When you customize your colors, this will affect Intro Animation, MVP and Emotes. Starting Season 3, we will provide more options to obtain Unstable Molecules. Please let us know which costumes you want to see with Customized Colors in the future!”
For context, the 600 Lattice that it would cost to use custom colour schemes amoutnts to around $5.98 through the 600 Lattice bundle available in the in-game store. This is ultimately an additional cost on top of whatever a player might have to spend on acquiring a costume that is compatible with the feature to begin with.
Despite this, however, Marvel Rivals has been quite successful for NetEase. Back in February, the company revealed during its earnings report that the shooter had been played by more than 40 million players. Since this milestone was hit, NetEase has continued to add content to the game, including the addition of The Thing as a playable character.
Back in March, director Guangyun Chen had said that performance optimisation for Marvel Rivals was also a priority for the studio. In an interview during GDC 2025, Chen said that the studio is working on lowering the RAM usage of the game, and that Season 2 might bring with a feature that could potentially help players on low-specced PCs in getting better frame rates.
For more details about Marvel Rivals, check out our review. The game is available for free on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. You can also check out rumours about a possible cancellation of the game before it was released.
