NetEase has officially confirmed and explained why they closed their Marvel Rivals studio in Seattle.
As shared on Bluesky by Stephen Totilo, he received this statement from a NetEase representative:
“We recently made the difficult decision to adjust Marvel Rivals’ development team structure for organizational reasons and to optimize development efficiency for the game. 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.
We want to reassure our fanbase that the core development team for Marvel Rivals, which continues to be led by Lead Producer Weicong Wu and Game Creative Director Guangyun Chen in Guangzhou, China, remains fully committed to delivering an exceptional experience.
We are investing more, not less, into the evolution and growth of this game. We’re excited to deliver new super hero characters, maps, features, and content to ensure an engaging live service experience for our worldwide player base.”
NetEase did not break the news about the Seattle studio closure to the public. Word spread about the closure after NetEase’s former employees, including the Seattle studio director Thaddeus Sasser, started posting about developers looking for jobs online.
Subsequently, Niko analyst Daniel Ahmad stated that NetEase was reevaluating their business as early as last year, which led to closures of other NetEase owned studios in Japan and the US.
NetEase’s statement matches Ahmad’s claim that the studio’s closure will not affect current and future plans for Marvel Rivals. NetEase was willing to shed just a little more light to their rationale for their decision after Ahmad referred to ‘multiple reasons.’
Gamers aren’t likely to take the statement well, in the context of the wave of layoffs and studio closures that have hit American game developers particularly hard in the last three years.
For what it’s worth, NetEase may still have American game developers working on Marvel Rivals, possibly working in China, or perhaps doing contractual work under the radar. But if firing developers after they just delivered a successful popular game is ‘not a good look’, imagine how bad it looks in the context of Chinese games being particularly successful in entering the US games market.
Of course, the public faces of Marvel Rivals are their American-made Marvel super heroes, as opposed to Game Science or Ultizero Games having clearly East Asian characters and settings for their games. We’ll see if NetEase can weather the storm that this controversy is bound to bring in the coming weeks.
