Marvel Rivals, the Overwatch 2-lunch-eating multiplayer shooter that boasted 20 million gamers inside days of its December 2024 launch, has laid off an unspecified variety of staff in its US operations, in keeping with separate posts by just lately laid off staff on LinkedIn.
“My stellar, proficient staff simply helped ship an extremely profitable new franchise in Marvel Rivals for NetEase Games… and had been simply laid off!” wrote Thaddeus Sasser, a recreation director at NetEase.
The Verge has reached out to NetEase for touch upon the scope and motive for the layoffs.
One manner gamers have reacted to the information by lodging complaints through consumer opinions on Steam, voicing their anger that NetEase would lay off the staff accountable for a recreation so evidently standard. Out of the roughly 1,000 opinions posted as we speak, greater than 300 have been adverse.
Along with Palworld and Helldivers 2, Marvel Rivals has proved one of many standouts in a collection of live-service flops within the face of stiff competitors from entrenched live-service video games like Call of Duty and Fortnite. It’s within the prime 5 video games primarily based on weekly lively customers throughout Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam and it’s presently sitting at quantity three on Steam’s most-played video games chart. And but, apparently, that wild success wasn’t sufficient to insulate its US staff from layoffs.
Sasser vocalized the disconnect in his LinkedIn publish, writing, “This is such a bizarre business…”
