Marvel Rivals Director & Team Laid Off Despite Massive Recent Success

NetEase's Marvel Rivals quickly became an anomaly in the videogame industry after its 5th of December release date. Coming out to Season 0, players were invited to a team-based shooter opposed to Blizzard's Overwatch 2, and it found massive success despite the oversaturated market and the recent — and resounding — failure of competitor Concord just months prior.

The results? The player base for Overwatch 2 on Steam quickly dropped as players joined the ever-successful Marvel Rivals, finding peaks amongst the hundred thousand, even managing to break their own record with 644,269 concurrent players upon the release of Season 1. The team was also in recent controversies due to the way they intended to handle Ranked, but it was only a day before the changes were rolled back, and players were satisfied once more.

Despite these incredible numbers and clearly staggering success, Marvel Rivals' director, Taddeus Sasser, and the team that created the successful title have been laid off. In a recent post by the director over on LinkedIn, he shares very little information about the layoffs, stating, "This is such a weird industry..."

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!

Oh well! Times are tough all over - Let's find these incredible people new jobs, because we all need to eat, right? :D

Information about the layoff hasn't been shared, as it comes as a surprise after recent successes that Marvel Rivals has overcome and numerous, possibly disastrous, decisions avoided by the team masterfully after listening to community feedback. Immediately after the layoffs, the game started receiving negative reviews trickling in minutes after the layoffs were announced by the director.