If you follow the news of the video game and if especially you are one of the players of Marvel Rivals, it has not escaped you, the game has made the headlines of the media in recent years, concerning: “Significant layoffs at Netease Games”which is none other than the publisher and the studio behind the game. Netease is a big actor in Chinese video game, based in Hangzhou, it is a big city located 175 km south of Shanghai. Society may not be as massive as Tencent, but it weighs heavy in industry, especially since China has been taken into account in this industry, which was not the case a few years ago , especially when it served in small hand for major Western and Japanese studios.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5HYAOXLJ0M
So what happened recently? Let’s say that the famous Breaking News began to appear after a series of LinkedIn publications of developers from the American Antenna of Netease, indicating that their whole team had been dismissed with one, knowing that among the people thanked, There was a certain Thaddeus Sasser, a veteran of the video game having worked on licenses like Call of Duty, Battlefield and Ghost Recon, and who held the ‘Game Director’ position on Marvel Rivals. On LinkedIn, he posted a long message to indicate that his whole team was dismissed while the Marvel Rivals game is a hit,
“It’s such a strange industry … My talented and exceptional team has just contributed to the creation of a new incredibly successful franchise with Marvel Rivals for Netease Games and has just been dismissed.”
Inevitably, with such words, how not to protest, how not to claim justice, when a game such that Marvel Rivals claims more than 40 million players? It did not take long for this announcement to become the topic topic of these last hours in the gaming industry, with a lot of media relays, explaining the shock to see a whole team being put in the door while ‘A game is a dazzling success. Very quickly, we could read that “Netease started to fire the thinking heads of the American project to replace it with the Chinese team who will be content to follow up now that the game is launched and that the game is a hit”. For some, Netease’s decision is political, even anti-American, because only the American game of the game was affected by these layoffs.
Only here, in the hours that followed these LinkedIn posts and these big sensation titles, all this started to be debnnk and many details began to surface, with journalists like Nick Calandra or Daniel Ahmad, director of research And analyzes at Niko Partners, who went to investigate, in order to understand what was really going on, and thus draw a clearer table. And after the articles that reacted with emotion by contenting themselves with taking up the LinkedIn posts of the people concerned without going further, we already realize that there is no massive dismissal and that the number of affected developers is the order of 6 people. We are far from the general panic of a huge American studio, since there are 6 people.
It is always unfortunate that developers lose their jobs, especially when it is suddenly and especially when the game is a hit, but you should know that the video game industry has been working in this way and this has always. Basically, when a studio embarks on the development of a game, he begins to hire tens or even hundreds of people for a delimited time, that of the development of the game. Once the game is finished, once The product is delivered, we no longer need to have so many developers in your team, especially if there is not another current project. And if so, and another game is in production, it all depends on the state of its progress. Is it in the state of writing, prototyping, in full production. According to its progress, a studio does not need to have a complete team, especially since I remind you that a game requires years and years of development. Each country has its hiring methods, it may be the performance over a defined time, it can be a fixed-term contract, it may also be a permanent contract, but no one is immune to jumping once the Game is finished, success or not success of the game in question. Inevitably, it’s shocking when a game is a hit, but once it is over and there is nothing behind, we separate from his collaborators, that’s how the video game industry works .
In a game of the Marvel Rivals type, where the whole creative part was made, it only remains to follow up and this is where I will come back to the post of Thaddeus Sasser, which has chosen his words perfectly. By these words, we obviously have the impression that the whole creative part of Marvel Rivals, we owe it to these 6 American developers, which is not true at all. In the video of VideoGamer in November 2024, Thaddeus Sasser himself underlined the distinction between the Game Director and the creative director, and at that time, he specified the main creative spirit behind Marvel Rivals was Guangyun Chen, while his own role To him, Thaddeus Sasser, concentrated on “The workforce and the budgets of the game”. With this in mind, it seems that if the departure of Sasser can have an impact on the production side, it is unlikely that it will be felt by the players, because Guangyun Chen is the real creative spirit behind Marvel Rivals. So no, Netease did not thanked the American creatives of the game so that the follow -up is now done with the Chinese team, because from the start, the real creative, it’s Guangyun Chen.
Inevitably, all of this could look like a political war that the United States and China are engaged, especially since with the arrival of Trump in power for his 2nd mandate, the latter wants to carry out a merciless economic war against China. On this question, difficult to answer it, but the official message of Netease stipulates that it is a purely restructuring of the design team which was there in support of the creative team that was in China. Netease now represents nearly 30,000 employees around the world, in China, Canada, Japan, England, Singapore and France, since I remind you that Netease bought Quantic Dream, David Cage’s studio, in 2022. So yes, 6 licensed employees, it’s sad, especially that Marvel Rivals is a hit, but this team of 6 was undoubtedly used for this precise mission and not beyond, As is often the case in this industry.
We can obviously share the sadness of this job loss, but get on your big horses and make boycott calls, you have to know how to keep. The video game industry works and has always worked in this way and there is little chance that it will change. However, it is only a secret for any title as “NETEASE dismisses the entire American branch, including the Director of the Game of Marvel Rivals” would attract much more clicks than “Netease dismissals six developers who were there in support”which is why the situation was exaggerated.
