NetEase, despite the success of Marvel Rivals, does not want to have international studios

NetEase is not making friends. Despite the tremendous success that Marvel Rivals is having, it has not hesitated to fire several key members of the development studio. The reason has not been clarified at any point, at least not officially. This has led to much speculation both in the industry and in the video game press. After all, the mantra until now has been that making a successful-selling game kept you safe from losing your job. Something that seems to no longer be true.

What are the reasons behind these decisions? Basically, NetEase is looking to restructure its businesses, moving away from all operations in the US, as well as any that are not expected to be multimillion-dollar successes. This is partly due to questionable advisors, CEOs with realistic expectations, and, as we will see in a moment, a dozen studios around the world hijacked by the absurd ideas of people with little or no understanding of the material reality of the video game world.

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Marvel Rivals is a thrilling, team-based PvP game that brings the expansive Marvel universe to life in a dynamic and engaging way. This action game allows players to assemble their dream teams from a wide array of beloved Marvel characters, including heroes and villains from the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men, and more.

Everything started before what happened with Marvel Rivals

Before getting into the matter, it is worth remembering that all of this did not start with Marvel Rivals. Before that, NetEase had already made very aggressive moves. Closing the Ouka Studios, which published the critically acclaimed and best-selling Visions of Mana after launching the game to market, making a wave of layoffs at Liquid Swords, the Swedish company behind the Just Cause franchise, abruptly halting operations at Worlds Untold, the new studio of the Mass Effect writer, and having disposed of Jar of Sparks, a new studio from the designer of Halo Infinite, their moves have been this irregular for at least a couple of years. It’s just that now they are more evident.

What is the reason for this? Well, in recent days, two different reports have delved into the reasons for it, one from Bloomberg and another from Game File. Both of them reaching the conclusion that the problem at NetEase is the CEO and founder of the company, William Ding.

A volatile leadership without a clear plan

To understand why, we have to go back to 2018. It was then that Ding set the goal for half of NetEase’s revenue to come from Japan and the West. This led him to start investing in companies like Bungie, as well as in studios founded by veterans of both Western and Japanese companies that had previously released successful games. The problem is that his plan has not worked as he expected, failing to achieve that parity with respect to Chinese productions.

Why is that? To begin with, due to the success of games like Eggy Party, a multiplayer game that has been a hit in China. Also due to the success of other Chinese companies, such as Tencent and MiHoyo, which made Ding feel that they were falling behind. This has led him, in recent years, to decide to radically change his strategic plan: instead of making high-quality single-player games, he wants to focus on service titles aimed at a mass audience. He even stated that any game that cannot generate millions of dollars a year is not worth developing.

Being accused of having a volatile character and not knowing much about video games by his own employees, his downfall has led to the departure of NetEase Games president, Xiaojun Hui, after 20 years leading the company. This demonstrates the leadership problem that exists within it.

Many studies on the tightrope

This has led to all of NetEase’s studios outside of China being at risk of disappearing in a short period of time. Especially the Japanese ones. According to Bloomberg, all Japanese studios under NetEase’s wing will not receive additional funding from the company to develop their ongoing games and will not receive any money for marketing, which effectively means the automatic death of their projects. This places studios like Grasshopper Manufacture or Nagoshi Studio, led by Suda51 and Toshihiro Nagoshi respectively.

What is the situation of the other studios? Not much better. NetEase wants to get rid of practically all of them, looking for a buyer and threatening them with closure if one is not found. This is the situation of studios like Quantic Dreams, Anchor Point, GPTRACK50, Pincool, Rebel Wolves, Skybox Labs, Studio Flare, and T-Minus Zero Entertainment, which could find themselves working for others at any moment or, worse yet, without a studio. All because of the capricious moves of a CEO.

An uncertain future for the industry

How all this will affect NetEase remains to be seen. The number of closures and moves aimed at keeping only their studios capable of creating successful games as a service, especially when they haven’t even worked that well for them in the past, doesn’t seem like a very smart move. Not when the industry seems to be facing more and more problems sustaining itself with that kind of moves, with all the companies that have tried it stepping back one after another.

This does not change the fact that this drama seems to be just beginning. That we still have much to learn about NetEase. Whether Ding’s plans succeed or fail, it is evident that the video game industry will not emerge stronger or better from the moves being made by his company.

Marvel Rivals DOWNLOAD

Marvel Rivals is a thrilling, team-based PvP game that brings the expansive Marvel universe to life in a dynamic and engaging way. This action game allows players to assemble their dream teams from a wide array of beloved Marvel characters, including heroes and villains from the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, X-Men, and more.