NetEase hands out free gift after Marvel Rivals server issues – players tell Fortnite to 'take note'

Marvel Rivals players are waking up to an in-game freebie for server issues that a lot of them seem to have slept through – but there's a limited window to claim it.

NetEase has responded to unexpected Marvel Rivals server issues by handing out free Units to players, leading some of them to tell Fortnite to 'take note'.

Depending on your schedule and where you are in the world, it's likely that the Marvel Rivals server issues passed you by completely; but for everyone else playing the game last night or in the incredibly early hours of this morning, you may have run into the error message Operation Frequency Too High. The error message was popping up across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S and most (if not all) regions were affected.

Players were taking to social platforms like Reddit to figure out what was going on, and it didn't help that the Marvel Rivals server issues weren't acknowledged on Twitter. NetEase did take to the game's official Discord, however, posting at 7.22pm PST / 10.22pm EST last night on Monday, February 24 – which was 3.22am GMT this morning on Tuesday, February – saying:

"We’ve noticed some unusual server issues and are currently looking into them as a top priority. Thanks for your understanding, and we’ll keep you posted with any updates!"

The team followed up with another Discord post just over an hour later saying that Marvel Rivals servers were back up – but that may have been a bit premature, given what seems to be a final update at 4.16am PST / 7.16am EST / 12.16pm GMT that also announced that servers were back up and once again apologising for the inconvenience. And this time, it added that all players would be getting 200 Units for their trouble.

The same post was also shared on Twitter this time, prompting puzzled players to chime in asking what had happened – although everyone seemed pretty happy with the free Units either way.

Serving Ws

Whether you were aware of the Marvels Rivals server issues or not, you can claim the 200 Units offered as compensation simply by logging into the game. You'll find it waiting for you in your in-game mail but make sure you do it sooner rather than later, as the deadline to get the compensation is 12am UTC / 12am GMT on Wednesday, March 12. That's 4pm PST / 7pm EST on Tuesday, March 11 for US players.

Over in the replies to the compensation tweet, a lot of players chimed in to say they were sleeping, or had no idea that Marvel Rivals servers even down.

"I was sleeping, all good mate," said one Twitter user, while another chimed in, "What happened? and 200 units?? don't mind if I do..."

The reception to the compensation for Marvel Rivals servers being down has been overwhelmingly positive, with some players tagging the official Fortnite Twitter account and telling Epic Games to "take notes".

Of course, there's no pleasing everyone. Some of the responses called out NetEase for offering too little, saying "it should be 500".

The game has a couple of different currencies, with Units (and Chrono Tokens) being earnable without spending real life money. That being said, you can spend irl cash on the Lattice currency, which is a premium currency and can be converted to both Chrono Tokens and Units. So long story short, 200 Units would equate to £1.78 / $1.98 / AU$2.90 as the Units to Lattice conversion is 1:1.

Given that a large portion of the playerbase were essentially unaffected, offering some kind of compensation is a smart move; and while it's not that much, it has players calling out other live service games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, Valorant and Overwatch 2 for not doing the same.