Marvel Rivals has been the darling of team shooters this season, so of course that means NetEase is laying off the western team? The news came directly from NetEase game director Thaddeus Sasser 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 writes, before continuing on to urge studios to hire the devs.
Level designer Jack Burrows added a little more color that suggests it was the American team hit. “Was an enormous pleasure to work with my American coworkers who join me in this sad culling,” he says. “Just couldn’t dodge that big boot I guess, no matter how big the success of the gig.”
The whole thing is super bizarre. The game has 200,000 people playing just on Steam as I type this with peaks over half a million. My own kid has spent the last week playing Jeff the Shark, and the game has been so successful that even Blizzard has acknowledged it as serious competition for Overwatch 2.
At this point, NetEase hasn’t made a statement, but we’re assuming that it’s planning to take global development in-house, with no real guarantee about the continuing high-quality of the game. We also must note that NetEase has been bit of a corporate mess over the last year; last fall, its stock value plummeted after Chinese regulators announced they were investigating and charging multiple NetEase execs for fraud and corruption. And of course, NetEase has closed down multiple teams and studios and games in recent months, including Jar of Sparks, Worlds Untold, Harry Potter Magic Awakened.
“We recently made the difficult decision to adjust Marvel Rivals’ development team structure for organizational reasons and to optimize development efficiency for the game. This resulted in a reduction of a design team based in Seattle that is part of a larger global design function in support of Marvel Rivals. We appreciate the hard work and dedication of those affected and will be treating them confidentially and respectfully with recognition for their individual contributions. We want to reassure our fanbase that the core development team for Marvel Rivals, which continues to be led by Lead Producer Weicong Wu and Game Creative Director Guangyun Chen in Guangzhou, China, remains fully committed to delivering an exceptional experience. We are investing more, not less, into the evolution and growth of this game. We’re excited to deliver new super hero characters, maps, features, and content to ensure an engaging live service experience for our worldwide player base.”
