Marvel Rivals team hit by fired despite a large launch success

Free-to-play Hero Shooter Marvel Rivals has been a huge success for Publisher Netease, who drenches the 20m player barrier for a few weeks in the launch and still regularly attract more than 250k daily simultaneous players on Steam. But that has not been enough to prevent Netease Lay -offs from making in the American development team that let it help a hit.

Marvel Rivals Game Director Thaddeus Sasser broke the news of job losses in the Texas studio of Netease in a message that is shared on LinkedIn. “This is such a strange industry,” he wrote. “My great, talented team has just helped to deliver an incredibly successful new franchise in Marvel rivals for Netease games … and have just been fired!”

Sasser did not say how many people lost their jobs after the decision of Netease – Eurogamer contacted the publisher for clarification – but the designers of Marvel Rivals level Jack Burrows and Garry McGee both confirmed that they were affected in individual messages.

“Welp, just fired from my work and worked on Marvel rivals with Netease,” wrote Burrows. “Was a huge pleasure to work with my American colleagues who participate with me in this sad cage. I just couldn’t avoid that big boot, I think, no matter how great the success of the performance is.”

McGee shared a similar sentiment and wrote: “My team recently helped in the development and launch of Marvel rivals, which turned out to be a bigger hit than we expected! Unfortunately my team was also fired. Strange Times in the industry indeed. ”

How unexpectedly the decision of Netease seems to be in the context of the outbreak of success of Marvel rivals, the movement follows on a number of the Western studios. In November, for example, BioWare veteran Mac Walters announced a “break” in operations on his Netease-Stunder Worlds that are undisturbed. Likewise, Jar of Sparks -a first -party party Netease -Developer founded by Halo Infinite Head of Design Jerry Hook in 2022 -The work on the currently not -not -not -ing debutitel in January, taking the staff and looking for a new publication partner .

This week also saw a non -specific number of dismissed by the Swedish developer Liquid Swords, which was formed in 2020 by the Christofer Sundberg of Avanlanche Studios with Netease financing.

Today’s dismissals remain a devastating few years before the game industry, as a result of which more than 25,000 employees have lost their jobs since the beginning of 2023. Less than two months in 2025, another 900 has already been registered, which affect employees in the will of the will of Unity, Hirez Studios, Sumo Digital, Ubisoft, Splash Damage and Midnight Society.