NetEase has laid off the entire American team of Marvel Rivals to "improve game development efficiency"
The Marvel Rivals team has lost several developers. The Chinese giant NetEase conducted layoffs at the Seattle studio, terminating all employees working on the game.
Marvel Rivals
The layoffs were initially reported on LinkedIn by Thaddeus Sasser, the head of the American Marvel Rivals team.
"What a strange industry... My brilliant, talented team helped create the incredibly successful Marvel Rivals franchise for NetEase Games and was simply laid off," wrote Sasser.
Later, NetEase representatives confirmed to the media that the company had parted ways with all Seattle-based Marvel Rivals developers, explaining that it was for organizational reasons. Now the entire development of Marvel Rivals is controlled by a team from China, which was already responsible for the game's development. NetEase hopes that these changes will "increase the efficiency of Marvel Rivals' development."
NetEase did not disclose the exact number of employees laid off. According to Nick Calandra, editor-in-chief of Second Wind, the American Marvel Rivals team consisted only of six people, so the scale of the layoffs was not as significant as it might have seemed.
As noted by Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad, NetEase has been significantly reducing its presence outside China recently, including in the USA. For example, it has previously terminated partnerships with the studios Worlds Untold and Jar of Sparks. The decision to lay off the Seattle Marvel Rivals team could be a part of this policy.
Marvel Rivals was released in December 2024 and quickly achieved success. According to approximate estimates, Marvel Rivals earned over $136 million in its first month. At its peak, more than 644,000 people were playing the game simultaneously on the Steam version alone.