Ex-Overwatch Pro Urges Marvel Rivals Players to Drop the C9 Term

With the release of Marvel Rivals, fans are reliving those nostalgic Overwatch days filled with fun character interactions, jaw-dropping plays, and inevitably, those blunders that can lose a game for the entire team. Interestingly, the infamous “C9” meme has made a resurgence, much to the chagrin of one of the former esports players credited with its rise.

“Marvel Rivals’ growing fame is introducing a wave of new players to the dreaded ‘C9’ term, and guess what? I’m the one who started it. Can we please just move on?” penned Lucas “Mendo” Håkansson on X (formerly known as Twitter).

Back in 2017, Håkansson was part of Cloud9’s Overwatch roster and played a significant role in embedding the “C9” moment into gaming history. The meme originated during a match in Overwatch Apex Season 2 when his team, despite winning the skirmishes convincingly, failed to contest the objective and ended up losing the round. This blunder happened not once, not twice, but four times, leading Twitch chat to explode with “C9 LUL.” Håkansson became a focal point of the meme during the third round when he bypassed the objective to unleash an ultimate with Soldier: 76. However, it was truly a collective team oversight.

These days, “C9” pops up in chat whenever Overwatch players are so engrossed in racking up kills that they neglect the mission objective. This trend seems to be spilling over into Marvel Rivals as well. The game’s mechanics, where payloads continue moving thanks to the last team to touch them, make C9 scenarios all the more common. This predicament is a hallmark of team-based games: there’s so much chaos that players often expect someone else will manage the objective. But when no one does, especially on a professional stage, the embarrassment is magnified tenfold.

Discussions on forums like Reddit continue to debate C9’s definition (after all, does it count if it’s too risky to step onto the objective?), but Marvel Rivals demonstrates a simple truth: if there’s a goal to overlook, a C9 is bound to happen.