Following an extremely sudden cut to the Marvel Rivals development team, it appears NetEase is going through even larger internal discussions about releasing an

The problem, according to a source cited by the report, was that Ding didn't like paying Disney, which owns Marvel, for the right to use its characters in the game. At one point,

NetEase founder and CEO William Ding was unhappy about paying Disney for the Marvel license, according to a Bloomberg report citing anonymous sources familiar with the company's o

Amidst the abrupt layoffs of some employees who worked Marvel Rivals, it's now reported that the game's cancelation was considered prior to its release, which is a surprising revelation, given it has already surpassed 40 million players.

According to a report from Bloomberg, the cuts to the North American team working on Marvel Rivals aren’t an anomaly. NetEase founder and CEO William Ding is reported to have cut hundreds of jobs, closed studios, and taken a firmer hand with the company’s Japanese teams — including the one led by former Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio head Toshihiro Nagoshi.

During the whole fiscal year 2024, NetEase Games brought in $11.5 billion, another slight plus compared to the previous year. The revenues from mobile games made up around 73% of the total, down around 1.5% from the fiscal year 2023. NetEase attributed this to both Marvel Rivals and its long-running wuxia battle royale game Naraka: Bladepoint.

Marvel Rivals, a game which has already become a multiplayer juggernaut, almost didn’t happen at all, a new report claims. Struggles over character rights and a costly move to repurpose the game nearly allegedly caused publisher NetEase to scrap the project altogether.

Marvel Rivals was nearly canceled by NetEase's founder before its release, a source reportedly close to the game's publisher claims.

A Seattle-based team that contributed to development on the popular online action game Marvel Rivals has reportedly been dismissed

NetEase's Marvel Rivals can't be described as anything less than a hit, netting ten million players in just three days from launch and raking in millions for developer NetEase in the weeks since. But a new report suggests that NetEase CEO and founder William Ding nearly canceled the game due to a reluctance to use licensed IP.