What Happened to the Marvel Rivals Dev Team? Netease Layoffs Explained
Marvel Rivals is about to get its next major update on Feb. 21 but, just three days before that content goes live, NetEase has laid off an entire team working on the game.
Throughout the day on Feb. 18, multiple different developers from a NetEase Games studio announced that they had been suddenly laid off. This news directly impacts a team that specialized in working on game and level design for Marvel Rivals and veteran talent in the industry.
NetEase Marvel Rivlas Layoffs, Explained
As Marvel Rivals continues to be a raging success across platforms in the free-to-play space, NetEase is cutting an entire section of the game’s development team. Specifically, a team that worked on game and level design in Seattle, Washington.
Thaddeus Sasser, a veteran member of the games industry who served as a game director on Marvel Rivals confirmed that extremely sudden layoffs had impacted his entire team on Feb. 18. It is unclear if the former Amazon and Electronic Arts creative director was also included in these layoffs, though he spent his time shouting out his colleagues affected by the decision.
Marvel Rivals Game Director and his entire Seattle based team has been laid off by NetEase according to LinkedIn posts
— Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) February 18, 2025
Following one of the most successful game launches we have seen in a long time... pic.twitter.com/x6bJMI7nKG
According to Sasser, since joining NetEase Games in January 2023, his team spent a lot of time working on research and development for the wider Marvel Rivals project as they worked on general game design, mechanics, levels, and more.
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These layoffs come as the game continues to experience a prolonged period of initial success that saw more than 10 million players download the game. After two months on the market, the live service title still peaks at over 300,000 concurrent players daily on Steam and is constantly being talked about on social media and content platforms.
Compared to other major live service games in the shooter space, it continues to hold a sizable lead on everything but Counter-Strike 2, including rivals like Apex Legends and Overwatch 2.
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According to a survey from the Game Developer Conference, 33 percent of surveyed developers in the AAA game space are working on a live service game. And, despite helping create a global success in arguably the most competitive area of gaming, NetEase Games has cut the Seattle team.
In the words of former Marvel Rivals level designer Jack Burrows: “Just couldn’t dodge that big boot I guess, no matter how big the success of the gig.”
Throughout 2024, more than 14,600 positions were eliminated across the games industry, with the total since 2022 surpassing 34,000, according to a community-run tracker. NetEase was impacted several times across Worlds Untold, SkyBox Labs, Ouka Studios, and NetEase Spark Studio.
According to Niko Partners director of research and insights Daniel Ahmad, this move only impacts the Seattle-based team and not the core Marvel Rivals development studio, which is based in China. He notes that this is a “part of a broader reconsideration of NetEase’s overseas investments and studios,” as the company pulled funding from the previously mentioned studios and other projects.
What Do The Marvel Rivals Layoffs Mean For the Game?
With the impacted team working directly on Marvel Rivals, there are some worries that the game will be affected as it continues to release new content each month. This is especially true since the current update pace includes two new heroes and one new map per season.
It does not currently appear that Marvel Rivals will suffer immediate consequences, if any at all. According to Ahmad, this decision won’t impact the game at all, and the “current roadmap is still the plan” despite how poorly this may reflect on NetEase.
“NetEase started its reevaluation last year, leading to funding being pulled / closures of studios in Japan and the US. The reevaluation, which is still ongoing, is being undertaken for multiple reasons,” Ahmad said. “It’s a bad look for NetEase to layoff a successful team, no matter the reason or how small the team is. The previous layoffs or closures included studios where you could argue current performance / lack of results was the issue. Can’t make the same argument here.”
Journalist Patrick Dane notes that press for Marvel Rivals always pushed as a hybrid development project between teams in the US and China, with Guangyun Chen and Sasser serving as dual game directors for their respective branches. No concrete reasoning was shared for why this development decision was made, though Dane says it reads like “the US side being slopped off” and leaves more questions about the mysterious handling of the successful game.
In short, internal plans for potential cuts started in 2023 and run deeper than just individual projects. However, these layoffs should not impact the future of Marvel Rivals, as they were not done out of the blue.
Given the above information, it is unlikely the layoffs will have a longterm impact on the development of the game's esports scene as well. NetEase just announced plans to scale up high level touranments, but this can be done through third parties in regions where the publisher does not have its own internal esports operations team.
Esports Illustrated has reached out to NetEase Games for comment.
