Layoffs Hit NetEase Marvel Rivals Team Despite Success

The gaming industry has been experiencing constant upheaval in the last few years, with studios and publishers alike initiating layoffs and restructurings in order to stay profitable in a competitive landscape. So when a game launches to great success but still leads to layoffs, it can be confusing, but that is what has happened at NetEase Games with Marvel Rivals.

Several LinkedIn posts from affected developers have surfaced, revealing that NetEase Games have recently cut its staff at the Seattle office in the United States. This team collaborated with NetEase Shanghai, specialising in game and level design.

This includes key positions such as game director and level designers, which would have been integral to the overall gameplay experience of Marvel Rivals. One of those affected is Thaddeus Sasser, game director, who shared that: “My stellar team just helped deliver an incredibly successful new franchise in Marvel Rivals for NetEase Games… and were just laid off!”

“Welp, just got laid off from my job working on Marvel Rivals with NetEase,” level designer Jack Burrows shared as well.

There are no concrete details as to how many people were affected by this round of layoffs, and NetEase has yet to provide any comments or reasoning behind this move. The game was met with huge fanfare at launch, attracting over 300,000 active players on Steam alone with more than ten million registered players across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. All of which make the layoffs unexpectedly disappointing.

A possible reason for this cost-cutting exercise could be finance-driven, but Marvel Rivals is a free-to-play game that had raked in an impressive US$130-odd million in its first month, which is usually something to celebrate. Work continues on the game, with more characters being added in the coming months, but the game will do so now without part of the team that helped make it happen.