Marvel Rivals shrinks by 40 GB in season 9.5 texture compression overhaul

Marvel Rivals is going on a diet. NetEase announced last Friday that the game is getting a major texture compression overhaul as part of the season 9.5 update, cutting the PC install size by roughly 40 GB.

Creative director Guangyun Chen confirmed the change in a video statement, describing it as an "optimized texture resource compression strategy across all platforms" — and promising zero loss in visual fidelity. "Our tech wizards have been hard at work forging solutions," Chen said. "In season 9.5, we are implementing a massive texture compression overhaul, without sacrificing a single pixel of visual fidelity." There's a short-term catch: the season 9.5 patch itself will be larger than a typical update because NetEase is repackaging all the game's assets in one go. Once it's done, though, the final installed footprint will be noticeably lighter.

This kind of storage cleanup is rare but not unprecedented. Helldivers 2 pulled off something similar last year, shrinking from roughly 154 GB down to around 23 GB after Arrowhead de-duplicated assets that had been stored multiple times to help older spinning hard drives. NetEase hasn't detailed exactly how it's achieving the compression, but the end result — freeing up 40 GB on an SSD — is the kind of quality-of-life win players rarely complain about.

Marvel Rivals has maintained solid momentum since launch, and season 9.5 brings more than just a slimmer install. Whether the community's goodwill holds beyond the storage savings likely depends on how the rest of the update lands — but for now, getting 40 GB back is a straightforward win.