There are a couple of justifications that we often hear when layoffs happen at a game studio. In BioWare’s case earlier this year, the studio needed to restructure as production on the newest Mass Effect was in the very early stages and didn’t require as big a team. In other cases, like the closure of Ubisoft Leamington, it’s about ensuring “long-term stability”. Sometimes, there’s no reason given, like with Star Citizen.
Generally, the underlying cause is just that a game just isn’t making enough money, and the longevity of a studio can often hinge on a single project making the big bucks. But Marvel Rivals developer NetEase has just laid off several members of its team in Seattle, and as far as we know, none of the above reasons apply.
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In fact, Marvel Rivals is one of the most successful games to come out of 2024, in a time where live-service games are almost automatically doomed to fail. That’s not an exaggeration. We’ve seen countless live-services launch and quickly collapse in the last few years – Redfall, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, MultiVersus, and Concord, just to name a few. Entire teams have lost their jobs because these games failed – we even saw Arkane Austin completely shut down.
If NetEase Isn’t Spared, What Will Be?
But against the odds, Marvel Rivals didn’t just survive, it thrived. It didn’t just have a huge launch, but managed to hold on to an impressive number of those players after the fact. It’s unclear just how much money the game has made, but safe to say the game isn’t suffering by any means. And despite this roaring success, developers are still being laid off.
To be clear, we don’t know the reason behind these layoffs, nor do we know the exact scope of them or the teams affected. We do know that at least one team based in Seattle, Washington, which focused on level design, gameplay mechanics, and more, has been laid off.
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Bungie cinematic director John Ebenger says he’s heard that the company is pulling all investments out of North America given the current political climate – we recently saw the Chinese-owned TikTok briefly banned in the United States, which might indicate precarity for Chinese companies operating in the country. Perhaps the decision was more about politics than economics in this case. Either way, it’s a sad state of affairs.
We don’t know how true this is – NetEase hasn’t released an official statement, and the developers who were laid off didn’t state if the company gave them a reason. A more cynical read would be that this was the plan all along: get the game off the ground, then cut the team down to a skeleton crew who can keep the content coming while making the game look more profitable. Considering we don’t know yet if other teams, inside or outside the US have been impacted by layoffs, I’m hesitant to say definitively one way or the other.
Either way, I feel bad for the developers who somehow have to churn out season after season of content with less support. And if nothing else, this reinforces the false notion that developers are disposable, a tool to reach success with and then toss out. Even a successful game won’t guarantee devs job security, so what will?
Even Players Are Mad About The Layoffs
Layoffs are always hard on developers, but it turns out that players are becoming increasingly sensitive to the impact of these job losses as well. On Steam, a scroll through recent reviews will reveal a surprising number of negative comments, largely centered on the layoff of the Seattle team.
One says, “I can’t support this game after what they did to their dev team.” Another player, with a recorded playtime of over 100 hours, says, “Entire design team and Lead dev fired because… *checks notes* They made to [sic] much money. Stop playing until they get their jobs back. Let them know!” Yet another says, “Congrats to the Suits running Netease on vaporising all good will I had before I could spend any money. 10/10, Long live the indie devs.”
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I have to say, it’s beautiful to see players using negative Steam reviews for good instead of evil for once. Will it have any impact? Probably not – recent reviews are still sitting comfortably at a Mostly Positive rating as I write this, and it’s not likely that NetEase is going to give developers back their jobs just because of a couple of bad reviews on Steam.
Layoffs are, unfortunately, a fixture of working in game development – nobody’s job is safe, not even if you make a hit game that makes a vulgar amount of money. But at least it’s nice to see that players care enough to say something about it, even if it’s just because NetEase’s layoffs are uniquely confounding.
Third-Person Shooter
Action
Multiplayer
- Released
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December 6, 2024
- ESRB
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T For Teen // Violence
- Developer(s)
-
NetEase Games
- Publisher(s)
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NetEase Games