Marvel Rivals surpasses 40m players, as NetEase denies abandoning western studios

Marvel Rivals has amassed over 40 million players since its launch, but Chinese publisher NetEase has denied abandoning western studios after it laid off a number of developers from the game’s US development team.

In its latest financial report, the company also boasted the free-to-play hero shooter topped Steam’s global sellers chart after launch and had over 10 million registered users within 72 hours.

However, earlier this week NetEase laid off an unspecified number of employees from Marvel Rivals’ US development team, with game director Thaddeus Sasser breaking the news first. “This is such a weird industry,” he wrote. “My stellar, talented team just helped deliver an incredibly successful new franchise in Marvel Rivals for NetEase Games… and were just laid off!”

Netease stated afterwards the layoffs were a “difficult decision” made to “optimise development efficiency”. However, a new report from VentureBeat suggests there’s more to come.

Sources interviewed by VentureBeat said the company is losing its will to make games outside of China, in part due to the high cost of US developers. The success of games like Game Science’s Black Myth: Wukong also prove the AAA capabilities of China’s own development studios.

The report also highlights that recent layoffs have coincidentally occurred alongside the trade war between the US and China, which could have further repercussions in the global games industry.

NetEase has denied such allegations.

“As far as overseas business efforts are concerned, NetEase has not wavered in its global expansion plans,” reads a statement from the company to VentureBeat.

“Our ‘two-pronged’ approach, proposed in 2022 (combining self-research and investments to explore overseas markets), is still actively progressing and yielding positive results. For titles developed by the self-owned studios, we successfully launched games like Once Human and Marvel Rivals in 2024. These projects demonstrate NetEase’s ability, along with our talented development teams, to produce high-quality games loved by players worldwide. For 2025, we have an extensive pipeline of titles in development, featuring a variety of genres, including FragPunk, Ananta and more.”