Marvel Heroes Dev Shutting Game Down Tomorrow, Lays Off All Employees

We report fairly frequently about studios getting shut down… in recent weeks more so than most. But for all the stories of studios shutting down, none so far have been as mindblowingly messy and confusing as the closing of Gazillion, the folks behind the MMO-thing Marvel Heroes.

As we previously reported, the game was announced to be shut down at an unknown date in the future following Disney’s decision to cut ties with the company. That makes enough sense: can’t do an official Marvel game without the House of Mouse in your corner. But in a rather startling and sudden change to the story, we’re now learning that not only will the game be closing tomorrow, the 24th of November, but the entire staff at Gazillion has just been laid off.

The day before Thanksgiving.

If that wasn’t messed up enough, the company’s abrupt explosion is leaving both customers and fans out in the cold. Fans have been unable to get refunds for recent purchases, but worse, employees have been laid off with absolutely no support: no paid time off, no severance, no health insurance, and no help finding new jobs elsewhere in the industry. It’s bad for players… but it’s a nightmare scenario for devs, and a classic case for why working in the games industry isn’t as great a job as many people imagine.

Worse still, we didn’t hear this news from the company: Gazillion itself has been hush-hush about the fact the company is self-destructing. Rather, we’re hearing this from employee tweets and discord chats. This is so messed up; I’ve seen Kickstarted games fail more gracefully than this train wreck.

Sadly, there’s not much we can do about it; it’s possible some sort of lawsuit could be arranged by the employees or customers, but even if it were, it would take years for that to settle. So for now, all we can do is give our well-wishes to the former employees of this terrible company.

And no, they will not be getting a postmortem.