Xbox

Today, publisher NetEase Games have laid off their entire Seattle-based development team, per posts from employees, including the director on the team that helped ship ‘Marvel Rivals’.

“This is such a weird industry…” Thaddeus Sasser posted the following one hour ago, “My stellar, talented team just helped deliver an incredibly successful new franchise in Marvel Rivals for NetEase Games… …and were just laid off!”. The full post can be viewed below and includes details on the developers that have lost their jobs, their skillsets, and hopes that they can be brought back on their feet:

“This is such a weird industry… My stellar, talented team just helped deliver an incredibly successful new franchise in Marvel Rivals for NetEase Games… …and were just laid off! Oh well! Times are tough all over – Let’s find these incredible people new jobs, because we all need to eat, right? 😀 Today I’m going to start with the inspiring Garry McGee! During the course of the project, Garry was fantastic to work with. This is a highly technical designer – currently working in level design, but I’ve seen his passion project! – who is a proactive problem solver. A lot of our time on the project was spent as sort of an “R & D” branch, coming up with new level design mechanics, gameplay mechanics, and so on. Garry was a key part of those efforts. His technical ability, proactivity, and passion for game development and problem-solving were a huge asset to the team. Garry doesn’t wait for a problem to slow the team down; he finds a way around (or through!) it. Early in his time at our Seattle studio, he developed level design tools and gameplay mechanics…that I can’t tell you about because they belong to NetEase, hah, but they greatly accelerated the team and often enabled the team’s progress.

On top of it, he’s a nice person too! He holds some strong (wrong) opinions on video games, he’s highly competitive (in a good way!), and he’s got a lot of deep thoughts and philosophies on life, making him an excellent team member and the kind of guy you look forward to talking to every day. *Garry, I’m kidding about the wrong opinions. Don’t come for me in the comments! 😉 —— TL;DR: If you need a gameplay level designer that is: – Highly technical (Scripting, C#) – Knows Multiple Game Engines (Unreal, Godot) – Proactive – Kind and Intelligent – Driven and Committed …you should talk to Garry! He will make your life and your project better. If I had a role I’d hire him again instantly. And no, I wouldn’t to make him relocate next time!”

Marvel Rivals is a free-to-play third-person hero shooter that launched late last year to great acclaim, all though no sources have firm numbers on revenue earned over the last three months of the game’s operation. The development team that was laid off was part of a larger team that helped ship Marvel Rivals, including engineer and level design work. Companies looking for now-prospective employees should head over to LinkedIn.com for details. Unfortunately, this team joins a continued wave of job losses across the industry that have shown no signs of slowing down since last year.