NetEase Games has laid off a major development team on Marvel Rivals.  Director Thaddeus Sasser shared the news on his LinkedIn page today. The entire team has been cut despite the runaway success of Marvel Rivals for NetEase Games. This is such a shock for fans because the hero battler has been praised from all corners of the Internet.

Sasser explains that his team were working as a sort of Research and Development division for NetEase Games. From the words in his post, the workers were responsible for a lot of level design mechanics. In addition, they also helped with the gameplay and other parts of the game. Layoffs have been rampant in multiple industries lately and this is just the latest example of that sad trend.

The post begins, “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”

Marvel Rivals Developers Laid Off

Marvel Rivals key art
Marvel Rivals cast

“Today I’m going to start with the inspiring Garry McGee! During the course of the project, Garry was fantastic to work with,” he said. “This is a highly technical designer – currently working in level design, but I’ve seen his passion project! – who is a proactive problem solver. A lot of our time on the project was spent as sort of an ‘R & D’ branch, coming up with new level design mechanics, gameplay mechanics, and so on.”

“Garry was a key part of those efforts. His technical ability, proactivity, and passion for game development and problem-solving were a huge asset to the team,” Sauser adds. “Garry doesn’t wait for a problem to slow the team down; he finds a way around (or through!) it. Early in his time at our Seattle studio, he developed level design tools and gameplay mechanics… that I can’t tell you about because they belong to NetEase, hah, but they greatly accelerated the team and often enabled the team’s progress.”

Sauser concluded, “On top of it, he’s a nice person too! He holds some strong (wrong) opinions on video games, he’s highly competitive (in a good way!), and he’s got a lot of deep thoughts and philosophies on life, making him and excellent team member and the kind of guy you look forward to talking to every day.”

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