How to Fix Marvel Rivals Random Crashes Mid-Game

1. Update Your GPU Drivers First

The number one cause of random crashes in a demanding Unreal Engine 5 game is an outdated or buggy graphics driver. GPU makers ship game-ready drivers specifically to fix crashes and stutter in new titles, so this is always step one.

For NVIDIA cards, use the NVIDIA App or GeForce Experience to grab the latest Game Ready driver, and if crashes started after a recent driver, do a clean install by choosing the custom install option and ticking Perform a clean installation. For AMD cards, use the AMD Software Adrenalin app to install the newest driver, again choosing a factory reset install if crashes are recent. Reboot after installing. This single step resolves a large share of random crashes, so do not skip it even if your driver feels recent.

One nuance worth knowing: newer is not always more stable. Occasionally a brand-new driver introduces a regression that crashes a specific game, and the fix is to roll back to the previous version that worked. If your crashes began the same day you updated your driver, and nothing else changed, try the last known-good release before assuming the game is at fault. Keep track of which driver version you are on so you can move forward or backward deliberately rather than guessing. For a clean install, the free Display Driver Uninstaller tool run in safe mode wipes every trace of the old driver, which cures stubborn crashes that a normal reinstall leaves behind.

2. Verify the Integrity of Game Files

A corrupt or incomplete file after a patch is a classic crash cause, and both major PC storefronts can repair it without a full reinstall. This is the second-highest-yield step.

On Steam, right-click Marvel Rivals, open Properties, select Installed Files, and click Verify integrity of game files. Steam will re-download only the pieces that are damaged. On the Epic Games Launcher, click the three-dot menu on the game tile and choose Verify. Let it finish completely before relaunching. If the tool replaces even a few files, there is a good chance your crashes were file corruption, especially if they began right after an update.

3. Check Temperatures and Cooling

Unreal Engine 5 pushes hardware hard, and a GPU or CPU that overheats will crash the game to protect itself. If your crashes tend to happen after ten or twenty minutes of play rather than instantly, heat is a prime suspect.

Run a monitoring tool such as HWiNFO or MSI Afterburner's on-screen display and watch your GPU and CPU temperatures during a match. Sustained GPU temperatures pushing into the high 80s Celsius or thermal-throttle territory point to a cooling problem. Fixes range from the simple, clearing dust from fans and heatsinks and improving case airflow, to setting a more aggressive fan curve. On a laptop, use a cooling pad, keep the vents clear, and play on a hard surface rather than a bed or couch that blocks intake.

4. Undo Overclocks and Test Stability

An overclock that is stable in benchmarks can still be unstable under a real UE5 workload, and that instability surfaces as a random crash. This includes factory overclocks on some cards and memory profiles.

Set your GPU clocks back to stock in Afterburner or the Adrenalin software, and if you have applied an XMP or EXPO memory profile that you suspect, test with it disabled. Many players discover that a mild GPU underclock or a small increase in the power limit actually stabilizes an otherwise crash-prone card. Test Marvel Rivals for a full session at stock settings before deciding whether the overclock was the cause.

5. Disable Overlays and Background Apps

Overlays hook into the game's renderer, and when several fight for the same hooks, the result is a crash. This is one of the most underrated causes of random crashes.

Turn off the overlays you are not actively using: Discord overlay, Steam overlay, GeForce Experience or NVIDIA App overlay, Xbox Game Bar, and any RGB or macro software that draws on screen. Also close background applications that capture or record, such as OBS or third-party capture tools, unless you specifically need them. Test with everything off, then, if the crashes stop, re-enable overlays one at a time to find the offender rather than living without all of them permanently.

Pay particular attention to any tool that injects itself into every game automatically, since those are the ones most likely to conflict with a UE5 renderer and the easiest to forget you installed. If disabling overlays does not help, the same isolation approach applies to background utilities more broadly: temporarily perform a clean boot on Windows, which starts the system with only essential services, and test the game. If it stays stable, something in your startup programs was the culprit, and you can re-enable items in batches until the crash returns to pinpoint it.

6. Adjust In-Game Graphics Settings

If your hardware is near the edge of what the game asks for, ultra settings can tip it into instability. Dialing settings back reduces the load that triggers a crash and also improves performance.

In the game's graphics menu, lower the overall preset a notch, and specifically reduce the heaviest options such as shadows, reflections, and any ray tracing. If the game offers upscaling like NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, or Intel XeSS, enable it, since rendering at a lower internal resolution and upscaling eases GPU load significantly. Switching the display mode to borderless or exclusive fullscreen can also matter, as some setups are more stable in one than the other. Change one thing at a time so you know what helped.

7. Update Windows, DirectX, and Visual C++ Runtimes

UE5 games depend on up-to-date system components, and missing or outdated runtimes cause crashes that look game-specific but are actually system-level.

Run Windows Update and install everything pending, including optional driver updates. Make sure your DirectX is current, and repair or reinstall the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable packages, since a damaged runtime is a common and easily overlooked crash source. Rebooting after these updates matters, because half-applied updates can themselves cause instability.

8. Console-Specific Crash Fixes for PS5 and Xbox

Random crashes are not only a PC problem. On PS5 and Xbox Series X and S, the fixes are different because you cannot touch drivers, but several steps still help.

Start by fully closing and relaunching the game rather than resuming it. Clear the console cache by fully powering down, unplugging for thirty seconds, and restarting, which resolves a lot of transient crashing. Make sure both the system software and the game are fully updated. If crashes persist, delete and reinstall the game from storage. Keep the console well ventilated, since a console throttling from heat can crash a demanding title just like a PC.

9. Clean Reinstall as the Final Step

If you have worked through everything above and crashes continue, a clean reinstall clears any deep corruption that verification missed. Treat this as the last resort because it downloads tens of gigabytes.

Uninstall Marvel Rivals fully, restart your device, and reinstall from your launcher. On PC, it is also worth deleting leftover configuration or cache folders the uninstaller may have left behind so the game rebuilds them fresh. If a genuinely clean reinstall on updated drivers with stock clocks and no overlays still crashes, gather your crash logs and system specs and contact official support, because at that point you may be looking at a hardware fault or an edge-case bug the developers need to see.

Before you contact support, spend a few minutes turning your experience into useful evidence. Note the exact moments crashes happen, whether they cluster around a particular hero, map, or menu, how far into a session they strike, and your full hardware and driver details. If Windows recorded anything, the Reliability Monitor and Event Viewer often name the faulting module, which can point straight at a driver or a specific system component. A support ticket with concrete patterns and logs gets a far more useful reply than a bare report that the game keeps crashing, and it occasionally reveals that the culprit is failing RAM or storage rather than the game at all.