The free hero shooter, Marvel Rivals, has been a great success for the editor Netease, breaking the 20 million player barrier only weeks after its launch and still regularly attracts more than 250k daily concurrent players in Steam. But that does not seem to have been enough for the company, which has now apparently fired the American Development Team of Marvel Rivals.
The director of the Marvel Rivals game, Thaddeus Sasser, gave the news of the dismissals in the Texas -based Texas studio in a publication on LinkedIn. “This is such a strange industry, he wrote.” My star and talented team has just helped deliver an incredibly successful franchise in Marvel Rivals for Netease Games … And they were simply fired! ”
Sasser did not say how many people have lost their work after Netease’s decision: Eurogamer has communicated with the editor for clarification, but Marvel level designers of Marvel Jack Burrows and Garry McGee confirmed that they had been affected in separate positions.
“Welp, has just been fired from my work working at Marvel Rivals with Netease,” Burrows wrote. “It was a huge pleasure to work with my American co -workers who bind me in this sad sacrifice. I simply could not dodge that great boot, I suppose, no matter how big the success of the concert is.”
McGee shared a similar feeling, writing: “My team recently helped develop and launch Marvel rivals, which turned out to be a greater success than any of us expected! Unfortunately, my team was also fired.
As unexpected as Netease’s decision, it might seem in the context of the success of Marvel’s rivals, the movement follows the layoffs in several of their western studies. In November, for example, Biware Mac Walters veteran announced a “pause” in operations in their worlds backed by unfasted neteless. Similarly, Jar of Sparks, a first -part neteless developer founded by Halo Infinite Head of Design Jerry Hook in 2022, stopped the work in his debut title currently innovated in January, dismissing the staff and began looking for a new partner editorial.
This week he also saw an unspecified number of layoffs in the Swedish developer Liquid Swords, which was formed in 2020 by Christofer Sindberg of Advancenche Studios with netease funds.
Today’s layoffs continue to devastate a few years for the games industry, which has seen more than 25,000 employees lose their jobs since the beginning of 2023. Less than two months in 2025, other layoffs have already registered, which affects The workers through the unit, Hirez Studios, Sumo Digital, Ubisoft, Splash Damage and Midnight Society.
