Marvel Rivals Season 9.5 Cuts 40 GB via Supercompression, Adds Ranged Vanguard The Hood

Marvel Rivals’ Season 9.5 update went live on August 7, 2026, at 9:00 AM UTC (5:00 AM ET) across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S — and the biggest story is not the new hero. It is the roughly 40 GB (approximately 30 percent) that every PC player just got back from their hard drive. NetEase achieved the reduction through a sweeping texture-asset recompression pass that rebuilt the game’s entire graphical library from the ground up, delivering a permanent install-size reduction without removing a single piece of content or sacrificing any visual fidelity — and creating a direct path toward a leaner Nintendo Switch 2 port that the studio has already confirmed is in development. Official Season 9.5 patch notes

How Taking 40 GB off a Game’s Hard Drive Without Touching the Picture Actually Works

Texture compression in games is not the same as compressing a JPEG. When a GPU renders a frame, it needs to be able to access any individual texel — the smallest unit of a texture, the gaming equivalent of a pixel — at random, in microseconds, in any order the renderer demands. Standard compression schemes like JPEG encode the whole image as a unit and cannot do that, which is why games use specialized GPU-native formats instead. Texture compression on Wikipedia

The modern standard for this is ASTC — Adaptive Scalable Texture Compression — developed by ARM and AMD, adopted by the Khronos Group as part of the OpenGL and OpenGL ES APIs in 2012. ASTC divides images into small fixed-size blocks of texels and compresses each block independently, so the GPU can decompress any block on the fly during rendering without touching the rest of the texture. What makes ASTC flexible is its variable bit rate: the format supports compression ratios ranging from 0.89 to 8 bits per texel, letting engineers trade storage against visual precision at a fine-grained level. ASTC developer documentation

Supercompression adds a second layer on top of GPU-native formats like ASTC. The already-compressed GPU texture is further compressed using a CPU-decodable algorithm — meaning the GPU never sees this extra layer. When the game loads an asset, the CPU decompresses the outer layer, handing the GPU a standard ASTC-encoded block that it processes exactly as before. The GPU pipeline is unchanged; the pixels look identical; only the on-disk footprint shrinks. Texture compression overview

That is why creative director Guangguang (Guangyun Chen) could describe the Season 9.5 work as “a massive texture compression overhaul without sacrificing a single pixel of visual fidelity.” The claim is technically precise: the GPU-side encoding that determines what the screen shows was not altered. VGC Dev Vision Vol. 20

What makes this unusual at live-service scale is the scope of the operation. NetEase did not compress a batch of new Season 9.5 assets — it repackaged every texture the game has ever shipped, including assets from launch in December 2024 and every season since. Rebuilding a full game’s asset library in a new encoding format is computationally intensive engineering work: the studio had to re-encode, validate, and package every texture at every mipmap level across every hero model, map environment, and cosmetic item in the library. That is why the Season 9.5 patch download is larger than usual — the new compressed packages must replace the old ones before the final install size shrinks. Players will need temporary headroom on their drives before the permanent saving takes effect. GamesReviews Season 9.5 compression explainer

The size impact by platform: Official Season 9.5 patch notes

Why This Matters for the Nintendo Switch 2 Port

Marvel Rivals is officially coming to Nintendo Switch 2. Marvel Games executive producer Danny Koo confirmed at GDC 2026 that development is already underway, telling IGN, “We will do it.” No release window has been set. Marvel Rivals Switch 2 confirmation

The Nintendo Switch 2 ships with 256 GB of storage. Before Season 9.5, Marvel Rivals’ base PC install sat at roughly 82 GB without the optional high-resolution texture pack, or around 124 GB with it — consuming anywhere from a third to nearly half of a Switch 2’s available storage in a single game. A 30 percent reduction on the base install brings that figure closer to approximately 57 GB, which is still a substantial allocation but meaningfully more manageable on storage-constrained hardware.

NetEase has not confirmed that the compression work is specifically tied to Switch 2 optimization, but the timing — with the port already in development and the studio publicly aware of the storage constraint — makes the connection more than circumstantial. The compression is applied to the base texture system, separately from the optional high-resolution and low-resolution resource packs that PC players can already install.

The Hood: A Vanguard Who Refuses to Tank Up Close

The Season 9.5 roster addition is The Hood — Parker Robbins — who enters as the game’s newest Vanguard. His design is distinctive: most Vanguards are close-range tanks built around melee abilities, barriers, and zone control. The Hood operates at extended range with twin pistols, making him the first member of the Vanguard class whose primary damage pressure comes from sustained mid-range gunfire rather than melee engagement.

In the game’s lore, Robbins is a criminal who killed a Nisanti demon and stole its mystical cloak — granting him occult abilities that grow as he deals damage and absorbs punishment. NetEase describes him as “a dynamic gunner who walks the razor’s edge between mortal mobster and demonic powerhouse.” Official Season 9.5 patch notes

His kit builds Demonic Energy through combat. His twin pistols gain a faster fire rate at 50 percent energy. At 100 percent, he automatically enters Half-Demon State, swapping to demonic rifles with infinite ammo and lifesteal. His defensive toolkit includes a Mantle of Oblivion shield and dark magic orbs that form barriers and drain enemy fire. His Ultimate — Full Demon State (Gun Devil) — transforms him into a fully realized Gun Demon who fires piercing rounds capable of passing through shields and multiple enemies simultaneously while radiating dark energy that grants bonus health to nearby teammates. His base health is 550, rising to 1,000 in full Gun Devil form.

The character is voiced by WWE Superstar Damian Priest, whose legal name is Luis Martínez. Priest, who is of Puerto Rican descent and was raised in the Bronx — as is Parker Robbins in the game’s lore — announced his role on social media, writing “Honored to voice The Hood in @MarvelRivals! Available August 7. #Wepa,” using his personal catchphrase, which was incorporated into The Hood’s in-game kill lines. Damian Priest announcement post

The Hood’s design includes culturally specific iconography: Taíno symbols appear on his belt buckle (the coquí, a petroglyph of the frog species prominent in indigenous legends) and left-arm tattoo (Sol de Jayuya, an anthropomorphic sun linked with the creator god Yocahú), while the chest design on his demon form draws from the Puerto Rican flag’s lone star. His emblem is inspired by traditional Puerto Rican vejigante carnival masks. The Hood on Marvel Rivals Wiki

What Else Comes With Season 9.5

Creed of Akkaba event: Live now through August 27. Complete missions to earn the Punisher’s Sandstorm Soldier costume at no cost. Premium-tier rewards are also available for Units. Official Season 9.5 patch notes

Twitch Drops: A new drops campaign is active as of August 7 at 12:00 PM UTC, running through September 4 at 9:00 AM UTC. Watch any stream in the Marvel Rivals Twitch category tagged “Drops Enabled” after linking your Twitch and Marvel Rivals accounts. The headline reward is the Elsa Bloodstone “Will of Galacta” costume. To claim: link accounts at the official Marvel Rivals Twitch Drops page, accumulate the required watch time on any eligible stream, then manually claim the reward at twitch.tv/drops/inventory before the campaign ends — unclaimed drops expire.

Summer Festival Vol. 2 (August 13): Swimsuit Special costumes arrive for Scarlet Witch, Magik, and Storm. Lady Loki receives a customizable animation system — players can toggle exclusive movement and ability animations directly in the costume menu. Black Widow’s Aquatic Assassin skin receives a new Ultimate Ability visual effect. Krakoan Reels Vol. 2 gacha event also returns this week.

Hellfire Gala (August 21): Cyclops, Phoenix, and Daredevil receive new Hellfire Gala costumes, alongside an X-Men ’97 Season 2 collaboration.

Pick Your Own (PYO) store format: The in-game cosmetics shop now lets players choose exactly which items to include in a bundle, with the price adjusting dynamically based on their selections. NetEase has confirmed the adaptive pricing matches the previous flat bundle pricing for equivalent content. Season 9.5’s launch PYO bundle includes The Hood’s Sinful Blackout costume, Iron Fist’s Furious Flow skin, and Moon Knight’s Fist of Khonshu skin. Official Season 9.5 patch notes

Balance Changes and Bug Fixes

Season 9.5 ships with a full balance pass. Peni Parker was the most notable nerf target: her Cyber-Web Snare Immobilize effect has been made less frequent to reduce what the studio described as “too oppressive” crowd control, though her secondary fire was buffed in compensation. Jubilee, Devil Dinosaur, and Gambit are among the heroes receiving buffs. Season 9.5 patch notes via Beebom

Among the bug fixes: a KO icon display error on Peni Parker after defeating enemies with Cyber-Web Cluster following a Black Panther Team-Up; Rocket Raccoon’s Repair Mode charges abnormally refilling after the Planet X Pals Team-Up; Cloak & Dagger being incorrectly affected by Emma Frost’s Ultimate control effect; and a Cloak & Dagger interaction with The Hood’s Team-Up that caused Cloak to occasionally lose access to Terror Cape. A map fix addresses Angela getting stuck in a Thebes corridor. Official Season 9.5 patch notes

Where Does This Leave Marvel Rivals?

Season 9 drew criticism from a vocal portion of the player base — the dual-loadout Team-Up overhaul generated visual clutter that drove the Steam “Recent Reviews” rating to Mixed, and a rapid patch in July reduced particle intensity across 19 Team-Up abilities. Season 9.5 continues the pattern of NetEase using mid-season updates to address complaints: the storage overhaul responds to a long-running grievance about install bloat in a game that has grown substantially since its December 2024 launch. The storage reduction, combined with a no-cost earnable skin through Twitch Drops and the new PYO store flexibility, positions the update as a goodwill investment as much as a content drop. TechTimes Season 9 visual clutter article

Season 9.5 runs through September 11, 2026, when Season 10.0 is expected to begin.

Marvel Rivals is free to play on PC (Steam and Epic Games Store), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. NetEase Games, which develops and publishes Marvel Rivals, is headquartered in China and is subject to China’s National Intelligence Law (2017), which requires organizations to cooperate with government intelligence requests on demand, as well as the Cybersecurity Law (2017) and Data Security Law (2021). Players with data privacy concerns can review NetEase’s published privacy policy and apply standard data-minimization practices, such as using a non-primary email for registration.

Frequently Asked Questions

How big is the Marvel Rivals Season 9.5 download, and will my install actually get smaller?

The Season 9.5 patch download will be larger than a standard update — larger than usual because NetEase is shipping new compressed versions of every texture asset in the game. Once the patch installs and the old packages are replaced, PC players should see their overall install size drop by roughly 40 GB (approximately 30 percent). PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S players can expect around 15 GB (approximately 20 percent) back. PlayStation 4 players will see a smaller reduction of about 7 percent. Players should make sure they have enough temporary disk space for the patch download itself before those savings take effect.

Who voices The Hood in Marvel Rivals, and why does the character have Puerto Rican cultural symbols?

WWE Superstar Damian Priest — whose legal name is Luis Martínez — voices The Hood. Priest is of Puerto Rican descent and was raised in the Bronx, as is the game’s version of Parker Robbins. NetEase wove Taíno symbols into The Hood’s costume design (the coquí petroglyph on his belt buckle and Sol de Jayuya on his arm tattoo) and drew the demon-form chest design from the Puerto Rican flag’s lone star. The Hood’s kill-line “¡Wepa!” is Priest’s own catchphrase, incorporated directly into the character. The Hood on Marvel Rivals Wiki

Will Marvel Rivals come to Nintendo Switch 2, and does the storage reduction help?

A Nintendo Switch 2 version of Marvel Rivals is officially in development. Marvel Games executive producer Danny Koo confirmed to IGN at GDC 2026 that the team is working on it and “will do it,” with no release window announced. The Season 9.5 storage reduction is directly relevant: the Switch 2 ships with 256 GB of storage, and a 130 GB install (with high-res texture pack) would have consumed roughly half of that. The recompressed base install will be meaningfully smaller, easing the port’s storage demands — though the full engineering work to optimize Marvel Rivals for Switch 2 hardware extends well beyond disk footprint. Marvel Rivals Switch 2 confirmation

How do I earn the free Elsa Bloodstone “Will of Galacta” costume in Season 9.5?

Link your Twitch account to your Marvel Rivals game account on the official Marvel Rivals Twitch Drops page, then watch any stream in the Marvel Rivals Twitch category tagged “Drops Enabled.” The Twitch Drops campaign runs from August 7 at 12:00 PM UTC through September 4 at 9:00 AM UTC. Once you accumulate the required watch time, manually claim the reward at twitch.tv/drops/inventory — unclaimed drops expire when the campaign closes. You do not need to watch any specific stream or official broadcast; any eligible Marvel Rivals stream on Twitch counts.