Marvel Rivals Director and Entire Seattle Design Team Laid Off, NetEase Tells Fans Not to Worry About the Game
Marvel Rivals developer NetEase has confirmed cuts to its Seattle-based design team for “organizational reasons.”
Overnight, Marvel Rivals game director Thaddeus Sasser took to LinkedIn to announce that he and his team were laid off.
“This is such a weird industry,” Sasser began. “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! Times are tough all over - Let's find these incredible people new jobs, because we all need to eat, right? :D”
The video game development community reacted with a mix of shock and anger to the cuts, given Marvel Rivals’ explosive success. The free-to-play hero shooter has seen over 20 million downloads since launch in December, and huge peak concurrent player numbers on Steam.
According to Sasser’s LinkedIn profile, his team focused on game and level design work for Marvel Rivals, “offering guidance, strategy, and design direction over the last couple of years.”
NetEase issued IGN a statement confirming the layoffs, but failed to specify how many people were cut.
“We recently made the difficult decision to adjust Marvel Rivals’ development team structure for organizational reasons and to optimize development efficiency for the game," NetEase said.
"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.”
But NetEase was keen to stress that the layoffs won’t impact ongoing support for Marvel Rivals, whose primary development team is based in China.
“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
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