Marvel Rivals was just announced, the latest collaboration between Marvel and Netease Games. Unfortunately, we are already learning about issues behind the scenes of its production.
William Bao, a concept artist who now works for id software, shared this message on Twitter:
“I remember working on this with NetEase over covid, they did not pay for the work I did at the end and it was one of the most directionless project I’ve ever had the misfortune of working on.
Most of the feedback during concept boiled down to: “look at this thing from this other thing and copy it.” At one point the reference image provided was literally a piece of concept art that was trending on artstation on that same day smfh
Back then I was young and hungry. This goes out to all younger artists in this industry, don’t ever do “free” art tests. If you’re good enough then you deserve to be payed for your time. Any work you do during these “tests” are company properties and could be used in the end.”
William made another statement when someone followed up to confirm if he really didn’t get paid for his concept art work on Marvel Rivals:
“Not at all, I started to get suspicious around the start of week 3. They kept on saying its just a style test for the project, but the feedback kept on getting more and more specific. No “art test” lasts that long. Can only imagine how much free work they got out of “art tests””
There are three other people in the replies stating they had a similar experience, but William has an interesting back and forth with one forgettasaurus:
“forgettasaurus: My friend did contract work as an illustrator for netease and they have the exact same experience
William Bao: That is unfortunate. I’ve heard they’ve gotten better in recent time. Some friends have said they’re pretty reliable clients, so maybe it varies from team to team or projects to projects.
forgettasaurus: They did get paid at the end but had zero refs or communication from Netease”
So apparently Netease may not be treating their current workers the way they did William, but that doesn’t meant what happened to William was OK, or that it makes it OK. If other accounts like his come up, we may get a bigger picture on what was going on in the company.
Netease’s other Marvel games are mobile games Marvel Super War and Marvel Duel. Unfortunately, since there isn’t as much of a skeptical eye in the mobile market as there is in the PC/console space, they may have been their games like this this whole time, with the public completely unaware.
We would like to get clarification on this issue from Netease, and possibly, compensation for William and other workers they may not have treated fairly.
