When Marvel Rivals released, it was discovered that several terms that were considered controversial in China (the home country of developer NetEase) had been banned from the game. The terms in question include "free Taiwan", "free Hong Kong", "free Tibet", "Taiwan is a country", "Taiwan No 1", "1989" (the year the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred), and "Winnie-the-Pooh" (who many have compared to Chinese president Xi Jinping via internet memes, resulting in the character being censored in China as a whole). Additionally, in a clip from a livestream by YouTuber Asmongold, it was discovered that while "free Taiwan" was banned, the terms "Taiwan sucks" and "Taiwan is bad" were not, furthering the censorship accusations. It's worth noting however that the censorship did not exclusively apply to terms related to China, as terms such as "ISIS" and "Hitler" were also discovered to be banned in the game, likely due to them both being more universally controversial.