Updated at 02:48 am EST on Jul 23, 2025: NetEase has issued a statement explaining why some of its developers in the US were laid off on Tuesday. The studio cites “organizational reasons” and a need to “optimize development efficiency” as the reasons for the layoffs. It has also assured players that Rivals' core development team remains intact and more work, not less, is going into the game. The full statement can be found below.
Summary
More than ever, it’s difficult to hold down a stable job in the games industry.A whopping one in ten developers were laid off throughout 2024, and we’ve seen even critically successful andbeloved studios like Tango Gameworks shut downfor no good reason. It felt as though you needed to be working on a money-making mega hit to have any kind of job security, but nowMarvel Rivalshas proven that this isn’t the case.
In a new post on his LinkedIn page, Marvel Rivals director Thaddeus Sasser has revealed that he and his entire team were recently laid off by NetEase. Sasser was seemingly in charge of a group of developers based in Seattle, Washington that primarily worked on game and level design, but a reason for the layoffs -if there even is one - was not provided.
In a separate post, another level designer from the same team called Jack Burrows confirmed the layoffs, who says he “couldn’t dodge that big boot I guess, no matter how big the success of the gig”. It has been further reported thatsix developers in total appear to have been laid off.
Marvel Rivals Director And Team Laid Off Despite Massive Success
The reaction of most people right now appears to be genuine confusion, given that Marvel Rivals has taken the world by storm over the past few months and is likely making buckets of cash as a result. You couldn’t ask for a much better launch than what Marvel Rivals managed,and it’s kept a hold of those players too, with an extremely impressive player retention rate.
Various people have been looking into the matter,including Bungie cinematic director John Ebenger, who recently claimed on Bluesky to have heard that NetEase is pulling all of its investments out of North America. Since it appears as though all the developers that have been laid off were based in Seattle, it’s possible they could have been swept up in the political side of business.
We don’t know for sure the exact reason for the layoffs, and it’s possible that those affected don’t either. At the very least, the layoffs don’t appear to be widespread, but that will do little to comfort those that are now out of a job, having contributed to one of the most successful live service launches of the past decade. If Marvel Rivals devs aren’t safe, then practically no dev is, and that’s a worrying thought.
