Marvel Rivals was almost demolished because Netease did not want to pay Disney

Rivals marvel It was a huge victory for network games. The superhero game has already accumulated 40 million players, preparing the foundations for his updating of the great season 1.5, but according to a recent Bloomberg report, the game has been almost demolished.

According to reports, Netease took into consideration the cancellation of the game completely because the CEO Ding Lei (William Ding) did not want to pay Disney for the rights to use Marvel’s characters. The report states that Netease has even tried to evade the question by telling artists to “exchange their heroes’ projects”, a move that in the end cost millions of dollars to the company before stopping with Marvel’s characters.

The report paints a wider picture of the turbulence inside the netease games. Ding aggressively cut costs, which led to hundreds of layoffs, closure of several studies and a pullback from international investments.

Just last week, Netease fired a development team based in Seattle who works on Marvel Rivals, with one of those who, according to reports, was the director of the game. In the meantime, other studies supported by Netease-Tract which Ouka (Japan), Worlds Untold (Canada) and Jar of Sparks (USA) -h-have closed or are climbing to find new publishers.

According to Bloomberg, Ding has fixed a high bar for future projects, pushing Netease to avoid games that “it is unlikely to generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year”.

Despite these relationships, a spokesman for Netease denied him Rivals marvel It has always been on the cut, indicating the company’s long -standing partnership with Marvel since 2017.

But while Netease revolves away from the risks of large budgets, other projects seem shaky. According to reports, the first American study of the company, Jackalope Games, is working on a Warhammer Mmorpg, but with “shopping at its Chinese non -Chinese studies” (according to the game file), the future of the game is now in question.

Despite these shake-ups behind the scenes, Marvel Rivals is still flourishing. Even after the layoffs last week, Netease successfully launched his update of the 1.5 season, introducing the thing and human torch as playable characters and making fun of Blade’s arrival.