Marvel Contest of Champions to launch on PC after making $2bn on mobile

Stay Informed

Get Industry News In Your Inbox…

Sign Up Today

Kabam’s mobile fighting game Marvel Contest of Champions is expanding to PC more than a decade on from its original release.

After generating over $2 billion according to AppMagic estimates, pre-registrations are now open for the PC expansion with five tiers of rewards up to a 200,000 target, including an exclusive profile picture and title, and various in-game resources like Catalysts, Shards and Crystals.

More rewards have been teased beyond the 200,000 target, but exact details haven’t yet been revealed.

The PC version’s launch date is also unknown, though cross-play between mobile and PC has been teased.

Character contest

Marvel Contest of Champions tasks players with building teams of heroes and villains from the Marvel universe, with 2D combat reminiscent of arcade fighters. After launching with 26 playable characters, over the past decade this roster has expanded more than tenfold to over 300.

Cyclops, Colossus, Captain America and Wolverine were among the original roster, while the latest additions this April include Spider-Woman and Lumatrix.

Each character also has a rating between one and seven stars.

Typically, new characters are made available exclusively to paying players in early release bundles but can be obtained for free via Crystals down the line. Paid, early release pulls are still part of Contest of Champions’ gacha-style system, however, meaning paying players still aren’t guaranteed the latest hero or villain for their purchase.

Of course, those players who do obtain the latest characters can then use them in Battlegrounds, Contest of Champions’ PvP mode.

This formula has likely played a key role in Contest of Champions’ earnings through the years, continuing to monetise players after more than a decade and generating $128.6 million between the App Store and Google Play in 2024.

At its peak, the game made $264.5m in 2018.