The Chinese gamedev company NetEase has fired its entire team in Seattle (USA) which was working on the popular Marvel Rivals game, including the whole of management team. At the same time, part of the team in China continues to work on the game. AIN explains what happened and why.
First, Thaddeus Sasser, the head of game development at NetEase, announced the layoffs of the American team on his LinkedIn. He did not specify how many people were laid off, but tried to help them find new jobs.
"This is such a weird industry... My stellar, talented team just helped deliver an incredibly successful new franchise in Marvel Rivals for NetEase Games ...and were just laid off!" Sasser wrote.
He the shared his gratitude for working on the game with level designer Gary McGee. It is also known that another designer, Jack Burroughs, was also affected by the layoffs and wrote about it in his own post.
NetEase later commented on the layoffs. They also did not disclose the number of employees affected, but promised to treat them "confidentially and with respect in recognition of their personal contributions".
"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," NetEase said in a comment.
At the same time, the core development team in China will continue to work on the game, led by Lead Producer Weicong Wu and Game Creative Director Guangyun Chen in Guangzhou, China.
Why did NetEase let the US team go
Insiders have told VentureBeat that China's NetEase has been ordered to sell off its overseas assets. Sources claim that the firing of the Marvel Rivals team is just the beginning.
It is said that NetEase is gradually losing interest in developing games with the participation of foreign employees. One of the reasons is the high cost of developers from the United States. Another is that Chinese game studios have reached a sufficient level to create AAA games on their own.
This is confirmed by the success of Black Myth: Wukong by the Chinese company Game Science, which has sold tens of millions of copies. It is likely that NetEase plans to withdraw from all international investments and assets, including the studios it fully controls. This will be done partly through layoffs and partly through the sale of studios.
NetEase is the second largest game publisher in China. Its team-based PVP superhero shooter Marvel Rivals successfully debuted on December 5, earning the company $136 million in its first month. According to independent tracker Mat Piscatella of Circana, Rivals is currently among the top 10 most popular games on PlayStation, Steam, and Xbox.
NetEase's gaming revenue over the past 12 months was $11.7 billion. The question is whether global trends, particularly the growth of Chinese AAA development, could affect other companies in China and force them to reduce their investments as well.
