Marvel Rivals has dropped a voice changer straight into its settings menu, and the community can’t decide whether NetEase solved harassment problems or created an entirely new flavor of chaos.
The latest October 16 update lets you transform your voice into everything from standard Masculine and Feminine options to full-blown Symbiote and Alien presets.
Players have spent months using third-party software to mimic ultimate ability callouts or just mess around with teammates. Now it’s officially baked into the game, which means either more people will actually use voice chat or everyone’s about to discover creative new ways to regret turning their mics on.
How to Use Marvel Rivals’ New Voice Changer Feature
Getting started with the voice modifier takes about thirty seconds if you know where to look. Here’s the breakdown:
The preset options cover a surprising range. Masculine and Feminine handle the basics, but then things get weird with Pumpkin Monster thrown into the mix alongside Symbiote and Alien. Nobody asked for Pumpkin Monster specifically, but here it is anyway, ready to haunt your ranked matches. Happy Halloween!
Choosing the custom option opens up deeper tweaking. You can adjust Tones to find your preferred pitch, then layer Sound Effects like Indoors, Valley, or Robot on top. Want to sound like you’re shouting callouts from inside a metal can? Robot effect has you covered. Prefer echoing through a canyon while playing Groot? Valley’s your pick.
A new Microphone Test option is also available in settings now, letting you preview exactly how ridiculous you’ll sound before inflicting it on teammates. Smart move considering you’re about to find out whether “Symbiote voice screaming about healer diff” was actually a good idea.
The Accessibility Versus Anonymity Problem
Admittedly, this new feature walks a genuinely tricky line between helping people and potentially making things worse. The arguments on both sides carry actual weight instead of just being noise:
adding options like symbiote and alien are gonna be funny asf, but this is a great idea for promoting voice coms when people usually wouldn’t because they don’t want to be harassed or berated cause of their gender or voice 👍
That nails exactly why voice changers can matter for competitive games. Players who avoid comms because of harassment now have cover to actually communicate without catching grief for how they sound naturally. Women especially deal with constant garbage in voice chat, so having a disguise option could genuinely improve their experience.
The flip side, however, is that many lobbies are about to become absolute audio nightmares. Imagine trying to give actual callouts during a competitive match while three teammates sound like competing cartoon characters and someone’s doing their best Venom impression:
So, people going to be hearing voice ranges from Darth Vader to Alvin the chipmunk?
Going to be quite the melody in Quick Play. 😂
Oh yay now I can get told I’m trash and n-bombed by 12 year olds sounding like venom and aliens, that’ll change things up and totally not give people a false sense of anonymity and thus encourage even worse voice chat behavior.
This last comment hits the ugly truth nobody wants to say out loud: “anonymity” has historically made toxic behavior worse, not better.
When people feel hidden behind voice filters, some absolutely will push boundaries further than they would using their real voice. The same protection helping marginalized players could embolden the worst actors in every lobby.
NetEase has essentially made the gamble that the accessibility benefits outweigh the potential increase in toxicity. Whether that bet pays off depends entirely on how the community handles having this tool available to everyone. Early reactions suggest it’s going to be messy either way, though.
Will you actually be using this feature in Marvel Rivals, or immediately mute anyone sounding like a Symbiote? Let us know in the comments below!
