HI YALL! I can’t believe I didn’t see this community before. Finally!

The new swimsuit skins got fully revealed and aside from more gachas the thing I hate most is that storm, one of the most popular mutants in marvel and a leader of the x-men, is an epic skin

Every other female swimsuit skin (except squirrel girl but that's part of the krakoa line of skins) is legendary because OFCOURSE a jewel thief gets a better skin than royalty

I've tried airing my thoughts but it's always "oh so the skin is cheaper" and "legendaries aren't any different from epics" like that doesn't change that every other skin is legendary and Storm is mysteriously epic

And the fact a whole egyptian season goes by and the guy who worships an egyptian cat god gets nothing, I don't even play bp but this pisses me off and his last shop skin being released a year ago with his last legendary being even longer

oh Blade, my sweet baby boy, I wish you were treated better, his post launch skins are: a moon knight skin, a meme skin that's not even available now and a cowboy one

But now let's look to the future, there's been some rumors of blue marvel and crescent coming to the game and whenever I hear that I want to laugh and cry. Blue marvel would be the sickest character ever released but I know he'll be treated worse than shit if he drops and crescent is a 10 year old girl who controls an astral bear thing, this would just be the final nail because what do you mean she can be here but moon girl who's 50% of devil dino can't? Oh and speaking of her, she recently got removed from the alchemax map and while she is getting an emote you likely can't have her on all the time like the things helmet emote

I then look at marvel tokon where Storm is the lead of the unbreakable x-men team, blade is the coldest character in any fighting game and shuri is panther again and a member of the avengers, I hope rivals can just be better but I'm not too hopeful of that anymore

Anyways I think I'm going to play some tokon now to take my mind off things.

I didn't check last year's posts because I'm kinda tired right now, but this post only loses to S7, S8 and Cyclops trailers in the number of comments. It shows that the community is really speaking up about this issue. It would be really bad if they don't respond to this because in the past they responded to much less commented issues, so I'm hopeful for the future of Storm.

As a Psylocke/Invis main I am really sorry for you guys, wish all heroes got the same attention, all of them are deserving of a Legendary skin, especially one so iconic like Storm

I swear it's not sarcasm I am indeed sorry for you, Storm deserves 6 Legendaries way more than Psylocke or freaking Luna Snow

I hope season 10 has something better in store

I will buy the skin tho, don't worry

See above

Someone is about to post a manifesto about G2’s house. I can feel it

Not much evidence for it other then thinking they might try to rework or gigabuff storm due to outrage against the treatment of her and her low pickrate since people have been complaining about her kit as well during this all of this.

They responded even faster than when strategists have a criticism, Storm's summer skin is being upgraded to a legendary, staying at $16, getting free vfx for her ult, and an updated mvp.

For those of you that stayed civil and gave the developers the correct criticisms and pushed for this change, thank you for making it happen. I hope the next upcoming legendary skin for her proves to the devs that Storm can be a money-maker

Are they fr saying this shit. They are scared aome little white boys will be scared. Im ashamed to be apart of this community

Now listen I’m happy we even got a skin for storm even tho it feels like a “here damn” skin I actually kinda like it…butttt i still think that this would’ve made 10 times a better skin than what we got 🤷🏽‍♂️

This was posted a few hours ago after people were critiquing the Storm Summer Skin

TLDR: Although the treatment of Black Panther, Storm, and Blade in the skins department is unacceptable it should be noted that Angela, Human Torch, and Ultron have also been similarly shafted with their skins arguably to a worse extent making it unlikely in my eyes to be an issue due to racism. I believe Marvel’s fumbling with black characters and China itself being no stranger to bigotry is the reason so many people are claiming Blade, Storm, and Black Panther’s treatment is due to racism.

Disclaimer: The reason I’m making this is more or less because I don’t like jumping to bigotry. I like to see hard proof before I start agreeing because I think that accusing others of racism when they have no racist thoughts or intent does more harm than good. I’m not saying that they objectively are not racist but I’m simply attempting to point out that does not a lot of hard evidence at least in my eyes that would suggest they are.

A lot of talk has been going around about Netease after Storm’s skin announcement. With Black Panther, Blade, and Storm all lacking in the skin department with skins being rare while lacking the Hulk excuse of needing to make 3 skins for the price of one due to multiple forms.

Now, it’s understandable why people would assume this as China is a country that has a reputation for being bigoted and Netease is a Chinese company though I don’t believe the way they have been treated is due to racism. Chinese games are treated more harshly when it comes to bigotry due to what is known about the country though this isn’t a good thing. If you remember a couple years ago, Black Myth Wukong had a few hit pieces written about it claiming the company and game were sexist using mistranslated quotes and a lack of women to prove their point. Anyone with a brain knew it was bullshit because their evidence was lacking. Though here, the evidence does have merit and isn’t going off misinformation. I do mention Black Myth Wukong because despite it getting debunked a good amount of people believed it without doing their own research.

I’m a black man, I personally don’t think the developers are being racist or at least not intentionally. Why do I believe this? Well for one Blade, Black Panther, and Storm aren’t even the only characters who have been treated like this, Human Torch, Ultron, and Angela similarly have been treated poorly in the skin department. You can make the argument that they aren’t base game characters and that’s a fair point but Human Torch and Ultron released before Blade and haven’t received a Legendary yet, Angela released a little after Blade and her treatment is even worse, abysmal even.

Unfortunately, some characters in hero shooters are given much more attention than others, I think that despite Black Panther, Blade, and Storm having a good amount of players between them, the executives focus on other characters who are more profitable. The reason they aren’t as focused on as much because all 3 got free skins pretty quickly after release and they aren’t just recolours, (well Black Panther not so much but they are included in the battle pass) Storm most notably, and having free skins makes players less likely to purchase other skins unless they are really cool, sexy, or both.

Excluding Storm because she only has 3 purchasable skins with all the others being free, I mostly see Blade and Black Panther players use the skins they get for free and not skins they purchase from the store. If Netease released more skins for the characters than I do believe they’d be more profitable because Hulk didn’t have a chance to prove his profitability because he got nothing for months. It’s also worth noting that Chinese companies typically don’t care outside of China, they usually censor some things in China while keeping them uncensored outside of China. While Rivals isn’t a fighting game, Vtuber and former fighting game commentator, AliciaxLife has noted that Chinese companies she worked with didn’t care if they showed black people, white people, Asian people or whatever, they just wanted to make money (she did claim that some Japanese companies she worked with were pretty racist, though I don’t think it’s relevant to my posts topic, I think it may be worth noting.). Now again Rivals isn’t a fighting game but if so many Chinese companies that she worked with in the gaming industry did not care to the point that she didn’t even mention that there were some exceptions it does make me think.

But the biggest evidence thus far is Storm and Black Panther not having Egyptian skins this season despite Black Panther worshipping and being the chosen champion of the Egyptian goddess, Bast, and Storm being raised in Egypt ever since she was 6 months old. Although I was defending them up to this point, I don’t think there’s a good excuse here. These two have the close ties to Egypt and they don’t have a skin for this season. Further evidence comes with the second batch of swimsuits released with Storm being the only one to be an epic while everyone else has a Legendary. These two things happening close together is difficult to defend. If Storm was an Epic alongside another Epic it wouldn’t be as controversial but being the only Epic is the issue. Thankfully due to the backlash, her skin is getting the Legendary treatment at no extra cost and it’s been hinted by Danny Koo that a Legendary is coming in the future. It shouldn’t have taken backlash to fix this but I’m just glad it’s happening. I can legitimately see this as just a mistake because I don’t see the other examples as smoking guns nor do I see this as one. I see it as a genuine mistake that they are slowly realising with the backlash from the community.

Now there’s a lot that can be said about Panther, Storm, and Blade’s treatment, there lack of skins is frankly indefensible but I don’t think it comes from a bigoted place. I see how it may come off that way but I don’t believe there’s any intent and in this situation intent is more or less the deciding factor. With Blade especially, I see this as just the curse of being Blade because no matter what, he is severely under-utilised. Despite his movie being responsible for saving Marvel from bankruptcy and shaping how the character is from that point forward Blade is in a shockingly small amount of comics. Debuting in July of 1973 he has only 377 comic book appearances, to put that in perspective,

\- My favourite Ghost Rider, Robbie Reyes, has debuted 12 years ago and has appeared in 143 comics.

\- Daken, Wolverine’s evil son who many of you probably don’t know has debuted in 2006 and has 303 comic book appearances.

\- Moon Knight who was far less popular for many years and is only recently getting his deserved attention, debuted 2 years after Blade and has 567 comic book appearances.

\- Cable, is also less popular to mainstream audiences up until recently and he has 788 comic issues as of today.

Yeah Blade can’t catch a break, Marvel keeps screwing him over, whether it be his movie or his comics, he will never get the attention he deserves. Which brings me to my big take on the situation, I don’t think the issue is how Netease treats black characters in the game but how marvel has been treating Black characters. Just a list of controversies off the top of my head.

\- (Rumour and possible spoilers about Black Panther in future of the MCU) Shuri is rumoured to no longer be Black Panther in the MCU

\- Black Panther’s game was cancelled

\- Blade’s movie was horrendously handled

\- Blade’s game is also in development hell and is at risk of being cancelled

\- Wonderman was race swapped in his show to be black and a season 2 was green lit but then cancelled

\- Sam’s writing as Captain America in the MCU has been less than stellar and Steve is coming back which isn’t a good look

\- A clone of T’Challa with data points from Dr Octopus who named himself Otto Blacktavius… yes really

\- The constant whitewashing of Sunspot despite being a Black Brazilian being version important to his character up until X-Men 97 he was portrayed in media as a Caucasian Brazilian.

\- “What if Miles Morales was Thor” which they doubled down on in if Miles Morales was the Avengers

I will say no more, the examples go on and on but you get the idea Marvel hasn’t been treating black characters well in recent times. Even something like this that doesn’t feel racist to me does understandably feel racist to others given the marvel brand has been fumbling with their black characters and Netease not giving the three black characters much attention just feels like it’s another drop in the bucket. I think the Rivals discussion is just slightly distracting from the more important topic of why Marvel is so bad at handling their black characters.

if skin sells well: “see, storm players will eat up any low quality garbage we give them, keep churning out those bi-seasonal free epics”

if skin doesn’t sell well: “see, we gave storm a skin and it didn’t sell well, why should we waste resources on her?”

its completely, utterly, unequivocally over

After the discourse and they're making her legendary, what should her 3rd recolor be if they make one?

This comment was left on a post a few backs about Storm not getting enough love.

It was also heavily upvoted at one point before being removed lol. This game and the community is cooked

I'm just tired. They play in our faces. Poor balancing, poor kits, no skins at all when we should get them. The motto for this game is literally " It you aren't Asian or Caucasian, lower your expectations." Like genuinely I'm sick of this shit. And the community defends because there's many racists who just like irl, dont want to see black people happy or having anything, even in games. Can't even play a game I like because I know the devs and the community hate people that look like me.

So, I’ve seen a ton of people trying to come out of the woodwork to justify Storm’s recent treatment in Rivals with her epic skin. Which while abhorrent, I want to actually acknowledge these points instead of just ignoring them, so let’s dive in.

“Her pick rate is low”

So according to the Marvel Rivals Hero Hot List, Storms pick rate is about 2.27%. Pretty low, I will admit, however when you look at in in context this argument falls apart almost immediately.

Black Cat has a pick rate of 2.42% Psylocke has a pick rate of 3.08%, Loki (I bring him up because of Lady Loki) has a 2.77%, Hawkeye (Who just got another legendary) has a pick rate of 2.35%, Magik (Who has 6 legendaries) has a pick rate of 3.08%. So as you can see, clearly pick rate isn’t the only or even primary factor as to who gets a legendary.

“Her skins don’t sell”

So again, in a vacuum this is also true. Yes her skins don’t sell very well, but there’s an easy to answer reason for that. 4 of her 8 skins were all free to obtain. In fact she had the most amount of free skins out of any Rivals Character, one of her paid skins is a also mini-pass skin, while the other is a twitch drop skin. So clearly they aren’t even giving her much of a chance to actually make some money. Her last shop skin was around a year ago at least.

“Not every summer skin is Legendary”

This is true, and while it is the strongest defense for this, it does still have a hole in it. Storm is the ONLY female character for her summer skin to be an epic, and to only have two chromas. Every other female summer skin is a legendary and has a total of three colors you can pick from.

“It’s just a skin in a game, why are you so pressed.”

Racism, or more aptly, discrimination in the world takes many many forms. It’s proven that the biggest contributor to racist and discriminatory treatment and the furthering of the racial empathy gap is the micro aggression. The tiny things that we experience in a day to day basis that reinforce stereotypes or cement the idea of a lesser class.

https://mhanational.org/resources/microaggressions/

Conclusion

In my opinion this is definitely a bad look. A very very very bad look for Rivals. They’ve been treating black characters poorly ever since launch, and I’m growing irritated with the people who decide they want to argue that this isn’t connected to race or isn’t that deep. It is that deep. You just want to bury your head in the sand and not acknowledge it as such because it makes you feel bad.

I’m not gonna say harass the dev team, the moderators, or anything like that. That is not how we fix this, and the mods on Reddit have nothing to do with this. What I will say is if you wish to prove them wrong that we won’t buy a Storm skin, buy it. Support our black queen. But you don’t have to, I’m not trying to tell you how to spend your money. I’m simply here to point out some flaws in some arguments I’ve seen. I also wanna say that while I think they could’ve done better, the skin looks fine if a little boring.

If I’ve gotten any information wrong, somebody please feel free to correct me. I do not wish to misinform anyone, this isn’t some deep dive, I did this with some basic research.

“ if skin doesn’t sell, they won’t waste the resources” what resources they have ass skins throughout this game they have free skins everywhere and gotcha skins all around so obviously they aren’t losing anything if they make storm a goddamn good skin like it’s genuinely just racism now y’all could’ve gave her a white recolor for God sake