NetEase lays off Marvel Rivals director and a number of developers to "optimise development efficiency"
Despite the success of Marvel Rivals, NetEase has confirmed that the game's director and several developers have been laid off for "organizational reasons."
The details:
On Tuesday, the game's director, Thaddeus Sasser, announced on LinkedIn that he and an unspecified number of its developers had been unexpectedly let go. “This is such a weird industry,” he wrote. “My stellar, talented team just helped deliver an incredibly successful new franchise in Marvel Rivals for NetEase Games …and were just laid off!”
Among those affected are level designer Gary McGee and designer Jack Burrows, with the latter taking to LinkedIn to confirm that he had been caught in the cuts. “Welp, just got laid off from my job working on Marvel Rivals with NetEase,” they wrote. “Was an enormous pleasure to work with my American coworkers who join me in this sad culling. Just couldn’t dodge that big boot I guess, no matter how big the success of the gig.”
NetEase confirmed the layoffs in a statement but clarified that the cuts were limited to its Seattle studio, which focuses on design. Its "core" studio based in China will continue working on the game. “We recently made the difficult decision to adjust Marvel Rivals’ development team structure for organizational reasons and to optimize development efficiency for the game,” the statement reads. “This resulted in a reduction of a design team based in Seattle that is part of a larger global design function in support of Marvel Rivals. We appreciate the hard work and dedication of those affected and will be treating them confidentially and respectfully with recognition for their individual contributions.”
Many are surprised by the layoffs, given Marvel Rivals' success since its launch in December. The game has remained one of the most popular across all platforms, hitting a peak concurrent player count of 644,269 on Steam at the launch of its first season last month. NetEase, on the other hand, has continued to cut costs in its global operations by withdrawing funding from studios such as Jar of Sparks, Worlds Untold, and Liquid Swords.
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