Felicia Hardy is a lot of things — master thief, occasional antihero, Spider-Man’s most complicated ex. What she is not is seven and a half feet tall. Somebody at NetEase apparently missed that memo.
When Black Cat dropped with Marvel Rivals Season 7, players immediately noticed something was… off. She wasn’t just tall. She was taller than the Hulk. Taller than Magneto in his helmet. Standing next to Spider-Man, she looked like she was about to pick him up and put him in her pocket. The community did what the community does best: they lost their collective minds, memed it into oblivion, and NetEase pushed a hotfix within days.
An Absolute Unit Walks Into the Lobby
The bug was impossible to miss. In a game where character silhouettes and hitbox readability actually matter for competitive play, Black Cat was strutting around matches with the proportions of an WNBA center who’d been hitting the super-soldier serum.
Reddit caught it almost immediately. The post documenting her absurd stature racked up 1,610 upvotes and over 215 comments — a mix of genuine confusion, appreciation for the accidental comedy, and some very specific requests that NetEase leave her exactly as she was.
The comparisons were ruthless:
- Standing next to Spider-Man, she looked like his bodyguard, not his love interest
- Next to Black Widow, the height difference was comical — like a parent picking up their kid from school
- Players were posting side-by-side screenshots with Hulk and Thor, and Black Cat was holding her own in the height department
- One commenter pointed out she was taller than Venom, which is genuinely unhinged
The best part? Her animations were clearly designed for a normal-sized character. So you had this towering figure doing acrobatic flips and cat-burglar maneuvers that looked completely absurd at scale. It was like watching Shaquille O’Neal do parkour.
NetEase Actually Listened (And Fast)
Credit where it’s due — NetEase didn’t sit on this one. A quiet hotfix went out correcting Black Cat’s height to something that actually makes sense for the character. No big announcement, no lengthy patch notes. They just… fixed it.
This is the correct move. When your community hands you a bug report wrapped in a meme with a bow on top, you fix it fast and move on. NetEase read the room, understood this was a visibility issue that impacted gameplay readability, and shipped the correction.
Some studios would’ve waited for the next scheduled patch. Some would’ve posted a three-paragraph corporate statement about “investigating reports.” NetEase just did the thing. That’s how you handle community feedback on a live-service game.
”Please Don’t Fix It” — The Community Reacts
Now, not everyone was thrilled about the fix. A surprisingly vocal chunk of the community wanted Amazonian Black Cat to stay. The arguments ranged from genuine (“tall women are cool, actually”) to absurd (“she intimidates the enemy team psychologically, it’s a tactical advantage”).
Some highlights from the discourse:
- Multiple players claimed they were “performing better” with giant Black Cat because her larger model made them feel more confident. Placebo PVP is a hell of a drug.
- Fan artists immediately got to work on “7’5 Black Cat” content, because of course they did
- At least one person made a compelling argument that her bugged height gave her a more intimidating presence in team fights, which — okay, sure, but that’s not how hitboxes work
- The phrase “step on me” appeared in the Reddit thread roughly forty-seven thousand times
The horny aside, there was actually an interesting competitive discussion buried in the chaos. Several players noted that her oversized model made her easier to hit — a genuine disadvantage in a hero shooter where survivability matters. Her hitbox may or may not have been scaled with her model (NetEase hasn’t clarified), but either way, a character that’s visually larger than intended creates readability problems for both teams.
Why This Actually Matters for Gameplay
Let’s get slightly serious for a second, because this isn’t just a funny bug.
Character silhouettes are one of the most important design elements in any hero-based PVP game. You need to be able to identify who you’re fighting in a fraction of a second. When a character is dramatically the wrong size, it messes with:
- Target identification — Is that Black Cat or a tank? At 7’5”, your brain hesitates
- Hitbox expectations — Players aim based on visual size. If the model doesn’t match the hitbox, shots that look like they should connect might whiff, or vice versa
- Team fight clarity — In a chaotic Marvel Rivals team fight, an oversized character model adds visual noise where you don’t need it
- Ability telegraphing — Animation timing looks different on a model that’s the wrong scale
This is the same reason Overwatch obsesses over distinct silhouettes and why every League of Legends skin goes through readability checks. Size matters in competitive games, and not in the way the Reddit comments were suggesting.
NetEase’s Season 7 Rollout Has Been Rocky
Black Cat’s surprise growth spurt isn’t the only hiccup Season 7 has seen. While the season’s new content has been generally well-received, the launch window has had its share of issues that the community has been vocal about. A height bug this visible doesn’t inspire confidence in QA, even if the fix was fast.
That said, the speed of the correction is encouraging. Marvel Rivals is in a phase where it needs to build trust with its competitive community, and showing that you can receive feedback and act on it quickly is more valuable than never shipping a bug in the first place. Every live-service game ships bugs. What separates the good ones is response time.
The Legacy of Giant Black Cat
She was too beautiful for this world. For a brief, glorious window, 7’5” Black Cat roamed the streets of Marvel Rivals like a kaiju in a catsuit, dunking on heroes half her size and generating some of the best community content the game has seen in months.
The fix was necessary. The bug was real. The competitive implications were legitimate.
But let’s be honest — NetEase should absolutely release a “Giant Black Cat” April Fools’ mode. The people have spoken. Give them what they want. A limited-time mode where every character’s height is randomized between 50% and 200% would be the most fun Marvel Rivals has ever had.
Until then, Black Cat is back to her canonical height, the hitboxes make sense again, and competitive integrity has been restored. The memes, however, will live forever.
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