Marvel’s rivals could be one of the biggest games at this time, but the CEO of its developer Netease considered to cancel it completely in a moment.
Just this week it was revealed that Marvel Rivals has already reached 40 million players, which to be clear is more people than the population of Poland. The game is clear! But this week also brought the news that American developers who work in the game have been dismissed, despite being such a ridiculously massive success. Now, a new Bloomberg (Paywalled) report has thrown some light on what could be happening behind the stage in Netease. According to the report, Marvel’s rivals even the publication were in question, since the CEO of Netease, William Ding, apparently did not like the idea of paying Disney for the license to use Marvel characters.
Supposedly he did not like this idea so much that he even asked the designers of the game to replace Marvel characters with their own designs, and there are even discussions to directly cancel the game, something that apparently cost Neteless millions of dollars, although a spokesman affirms that the company has enjoyed a close association with Marvel since 2017. These statements obviously paint a difficult image in Netease, since the report also points out that Ding had established a goal in 2018 for the company to generate half of its income from abroad investing in developers such as the creator of Yakuza, Toshihiro Nagoshi, except that Nagoshi’s project is now also a bit uncertain, although the report points out that his project has apparently had time to conclude continuous projects.
None of the layoffs that have taken place in recent years are justifiable, but it certainly seems frankly crazy to do it for a game like Marvel rivals that are almost guaranteed that it will print money at this time. Netease noticed in relation to the announcement of layoff 45 days.
