Marvel Rivals game director Thaddeus Sasser shares on LinkedIn that NetEase laid off his entire, US-based team despite the hero shooter’s sky-high popularity.
“This is such a weird industry…” Sasser writes in his LinkedIn post. “My stellar, talented team just helped deliver an incredibly successful new franchise in Marvel Rivals for NetEase Games […] and were just laid off!”
“Oh well!” Sasser continues. “Times are tough all over – let’s find these incredible people new jobs, because we all need to eat, right?”
In spring 2024, Chinese publisher NetEase started making dramatic cuts to Visions of Mana developer Ouka Studios. Then, at the end of the same year, NetEase reportedly transferred members of its central staff after it was disappointed by mobile game Operation Apocalypse’s local launch; that shooter has since been shut down.
This time, we don’t yet know the extent of NetEase’s latest round of layoffs, and the company has not yet responded to GamesRadar+’s request for comment.
As of now, it appears that Marvel Rivals’ entire US team has been wiped out. Former level designer Garry McGee says as much in another LinkedIn post, lamenting the fact that “my team recently helped develop and launch Marvel Rivals, which turned out to be a bigger hit than any of us expected! Unfortunately, my team was also laid off.”
