Chinese game publisher NetaSe has fired Marvel competitors The development team members include the game director Kotaku Report. Some of the people who let go were surprised and frustrated by the move considering that since their debut in December. A large portion of Marvel’s rival development team is located in China, but only reported layoffs in North America. It is not clear how many people have been let go.
“It’s such a weird industry,” Game Director Thaddeus Sasser wrote on LinkedIn. “My outstanding, talented team just offers an incredibly successful new franchise in Marvel’s rival NetEase games… But he was fired.”
“I don’t understand, man,” wrote game artist Del Walker Bruceky. “Even though the world tells you that live service is dead, it’s still fired, will you be one of the most successful live service champions in a generation? What are we even doing at this point.”
Marvel competitors are currently ranked sixth, and have just owned the first big one on the Steam bestseller list Content update For Season 1, it happened almost simultaneously with the layoffs. The game has received solid reviews for its fantastic knowledge and straightforward gameplay, reportedly Very successful In the first month. This has always been one of the rare good stories in real-time service games Sony Some of its developing titles have been scrapped.
People are worried that there may be layoffs from Chinese studios to deal with U.S. tariffs. In a statement VentureBeatHowever, Netease denied that it is eliminating its foreign investment and overseas game studios.
“In 2025, we have a wide range of developing champions, including various genres including Fragpunk, Ananta, and more.”[However] As part of our investment strategy, we began scaling down two studios by the end of 2024. The decision is based solely on business evaluation and is not affected by other factors. This represents only a small part of our overseas studio portfolio. ”
