China -based play publisher Netease dismissed some employees from the Marvel Rivals development team. According to Kotaku, those who have been dismissed include the director of the game. Marvel Rivals, a team -based PVP shooter game based on the Marvel universe, has been one of the most played games in Steam since it was released in December 2024. Although the game attracted great interest around the world, this dismissal was met with surprise in the game world.
Most of the Netease’s Marvel Rivals development team is in China. However, it was reported that layoffs only affected the North American team. The company did not explain how many employees were dismissed.
Marvel Rivals’ game director Thaddeus Sasser said in a statement on LinkedIn, “This industry is really strange. With my talented team, we developed Marvel Rivals, an incredibly successful new franchise for Netease Games.
Similarly, Del Walker, one of the artists of the game, reacted to the situation through the social media platform Bluesky. “You are developing one of the most successful live service games of the generation, and everyone says that live service games are dead… And are you still being taken out of work? I do not understand what we are doing here, ”he wrote.
Marvel Rivals is currently sixth in Steam’s best -selling games list. The game received positive criticism with detailed storytelling about the Marvel universe and easy to learnable gameplay. Recently, a major content update has been released for the 1st season. However, the dismissal immediately after this update created question marks about the future of the game.
Although various speculations were put forward regarding the cause of layoffs, Netease said that they did not completely eliminate foreign investments or overseas studios in a statement to Venturebeat.
“It is in the process of developing many new games of different types for 2025. These include Fragpunk, Ananda and other projects. However, as a part of our investment strategy, we went to shrink in two studios at the end of 2024. This decision is completely based on business assessments and is not affected by other factors. The layoffs cover only a small part of our overseas studios. ”
Although some analysts argue that this dismissal may be linked to the US -based tariffs for Chinese -based companies, Netease rejected these claims. The company announced that the main development team in Guangzhou will continue to work on Marvel Rivals and that they will focus on adding new characters, maps and content to the game.
New update is coming for Marvel Rivals
Marvel Rivals plans to add new characters such as human torch and thing to the game with the season 1.5 update to be released on February 21, 2025. It is also stated that the Central Park map will be included in the game. Despite all these developments, the dismissal of the Seattle team has increased uncertainties about the future of the game.