Free-to-play hero shooter Marvel Rivals has been an enormous success for writer NetEase, smashing by way of the 20m participant barrier simply weeks into its launch and nonetheless usually attracting over 250K day by day concurrent gamers on Steam. However that hasn’t been sufficient to cease NetEase from making lay offs throughout the US improvement staff that helped land it successful.
Marvel Rivals sport director Thaddeus Sasser broke the information of job cuts at NetEase’s Seattle-based studio in a publish shared on LinkedIn. “That is such a bizarre business,” he wrote. “My stellar, gifted staff simply helped ship an extremely profitable new franchise in Marvel Rivals for NetEase Video games… and had been simply laid off!”
Sasser did not say how many individuals have misplaced their jobs following NetEase’s choice – Eurogamer has reached out to the writer for clarification – however Marvel Rivals stage designers Jack Burrows and Garry McGee each confirmed they’d been affected in separate posts.
“Welp, simply acquired laid off from my job engaged on Marvel Rivals with NetEase,” Burrows wrote. “Was an unlimited pleasure to work with my American coworkers who be a part of me on this unhappy culling. Simply could not dodge that huge boot I suppose, irrespective of how huge the success of the gig.”
McGee shared an identical sentiment, writing, “My staff just lately helped develop and launch Marvel Rivals, which turned out to be an even bigger hit than any of us anticipated! Sadly my staff was additionally laid off. Unusual occasions all throughout the business certainly.”
As surprising as NetEase’s choice might sound in context of Marvel Rivals’ breakout success, the transfer follows layoffs throughout quite a few its western studios. In November, as an illustration, BioWare veteran Mac Walters introduced a “pause” in operations at his NetEase-backed Worlds Untold. Equally, Jar of Sparks – a first-party NetEase developer based by Halo Infinite head of design Jerry Hook in 2022 – halted work on its currently-unannounced debut title in January, shedding workers and started trying to find a brand new publishing accomplice.
This week additionally noticed an unspecified variety of layoffs at Swedish developer Liquid Swords, which was shaped in 2020 by Avanlanche Studios’ Christofer Sundberg with NetEase funding.
Immediately’s layoffs proceed a devastating few years for the video games business, which has seen over 25,000 workers lose their jobs for the reason that begin of 2023. Lower than two months into 2025, one other 900 layoffs have already been recorded, affecting staff throughout the likes of Unity, HiRez Studios, Sumo Digital, Ubisoft, Splash Harm, and Midnight Society.
