NetEase is finally giving SSD-hoarding Marvel Rivals players some breathing room with Season 9.5's texture compression overhaul, trimming the PC install by 40GB and console versions by roughly 15GB without touching visual quality.

Creative director Guangyun Chen laid it out in the latest Dev Vision video: the studio repackaged assets for a lighter footprint, though the initial August 7 patch will force a full re-download before the savings kick in. Pre-patch PC sizes hovered near the 70-80GB range based on player reports, so this represents a substantial cut.

Community chatter on X and Reddit has been largely positive, with players calling it a rare live-service win amid ongoing UI gripes that tanked the Steam score to mixed. The move aligns with Marvel Rivals' strong concurrent player numbers on Xbox and PlayStation, but it also highlights how ballooning file sizes have become a persistent pain point the industry keeps ignoring until storage costs bite back.

Riley's receipts show this isn't charity—it's damage control for a game that launched lean and kept piling on assets. If the visuals hold up post-patch, it's the kind of optimization other studios should copy instead of demanding another drive upgrade.