Marvel Rivals is a big hit—the first real challenger to the long-time hero shooter big dog Overwatch. Yet amidst that success, with more than 200,000 people playing on Steam alone right now, NetEase game director Thaddeus Sasser says the Marvel Rivals development team in the US has been laid off.
"This is such a weird industry," Sasser wrote on LinkedIn. "My stellar, talented team just helped deliver an incredibly successful new franchise in Marvel Rivals for NetEase Games...and were just laid off!"
Sasser's LinkedIn profile lists him as a game director at NetEase, working on Marvel Rivals. The game's creative director is Guangyun Chen, better known to players as Guangguang.
Level designer Jack Burrows confirmed the layoffs in a separate post. "Welp, just got laid off from my job working on Marvel Rivals with NetEase," Burrows wrote. "Was an enormous pleasure to work with my American coworkers who join me in this sad culling. Just couldn't dodge that big boot I guess, no matter how big the success of the gig."
And that's really the heart of the matter: Why would NetEase do this? Marvel Rivals is a major hit and, as reported by Chinese site GameLook (via 80lv), it seems to be making a lot of money—an estimated $136 million in its first month alone.
At the same time, the game is still finding its footing, and as we saw recently with Multiversus, a strong start can fade quickly if the team behind it doesn't stay on top of things. The core Marvel Rivals development team is presumably based in China but even so, cutting off an entire studio at this very early, game-is-a-hit stage is baffling.
💖 We are thrilled to announce that 20 million players have joined Marvel Rivals! Our gratitude for each of you is immense!🥰The spray is ready now, and we also included this number in the spray! Thank you for helping us achieve this milestone.⏲️Log in from December 20th,… pic.twitter.com/tr0k6NYZ95December 17, 2024
Some have speculated that this may have been the plan all along: Get Marvel Rivals spun up, and then cut the team operating it down to the bone. NetEase has been dialing back its US plans in recent months: In November 2024, it ended funding for recently-founded studios Worlds Untold, launched in 2023 by BioWare veteran Mac Walters, and in January it pulled the plug on Jar of Sparks, founded by Halo and Destiny 2 veteran Jerry Hook in 2022. In August 2024, NetEase also reportedly laid off most employees at Ouka Studios, the developer of Visions of Mana, before the game even came out.
NetEase isn't shy about cutting back where and when it deems necessary, in other words, but even in that light this is a weird one. Marvel Rivals is a hit but it's also still in a fragile, formative state, which doesn't seem to me like the time to be laying off developers.
