The studio behind the cancelled Marvel Heroes has laid off its entire staff the day before Thanksgiving, with employees reporting that developer Gazillion also hasn’t paid them their severance or PTO.
Gazillion was seemingly shut down yesterday, with all of its staff members terminated effective immediately. While Disney, Marvel’s parent company, announced that they were shutting down the Marvel Heroes MMO last week, it was unclear what lay in store for Gazillion and its employees. Now news has spread that the company has been disbanded, though its employees are not best pleased with how the situation has been handled.
Several employees have taken to Twitter to discuss the terms of their termination, with many expressing that they won’t receive their severance pay or PTO.
Yep, and we don’t even get our accrued pto paid out either.
— Brian Waggoner (@Asros) November 22, 2017
No, they aren’t even paying us vacation accrued. By saying they have no assets. We get nothing.
— Anthony Gallegos (@Chufmoney) November 23, 2017
In a message on the Marvel Heroes Discord channel (via game-debate.com), a representative for Gazillion wrote: “I’m super sad to communicate to all of you that Marvel Heroes ex-developer Winterthur just told us that Marvel Heroes Omega servers will close before the announced date. The new date is 11/24, that’s two days from now.”
Disney previously announced that Marvel Heroes would be shut down on December 31st, meaning that Gazillion’s staff have been terminated a full month before the game’s projected end date. “We regret to inform our Marvel Heroes fans that we have ended our relationship with Gazillion Entertainment, and that the Marvel Heroes games will be shut down,” a statement from Disney read. “We would like to sincerely thank the players who joined the Marvel Heroes community, and will provide any further updates as they become available.”
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Marvel Heroes‘ Omega server only launched in June, so those who spent money on microtransactions are currently venting their frustrations on Reddit and attempting to figure out how to get their money back. It’s never great to hear lay-offs in the industry, especially ones that affect a whole studio, so hopefully Gazillion’s ex-employees will land on their feet sooner rather than later.
