Things at NetEase sound worse than previously thought, as its CEO apparently considered cancelling the immensely successful Marvel Rivals at one point just because he didn’t want to pay for licensing fees

Marvel Rivals might be one of the biggest games around right now, but the CEO of its developer NetEase reportedly considered cancelling it completely at one point.

Just this week it was revealed that Marvel Rivals has already reached 40 million players, which to be clear, is more people than the population of Poland. The game is clearly doing well! But this week also brought the news that US devs working in the game have been laid off, despite being such a ridiculously massive hit. Now, a new report from Bloomberg (paywalled) has shed some light on what might be going on behind the scenes at NetEase. According to the report, Marvel Rivals even releasing was in question, as NetEase’s CEO William Ding apparently didn’t like the idea of paying Disney for the licence to use Marvel characters.

He supposedly disliked this idea so much that he even asked the game’s designers to replace the Marvel characters with designs of their own, with there even being discussions of outright cancelling the game, something that apparently cost NetEase millions of dollars, though a spokesperson claims the company has enjoyed a close partnership with Marvel since 2017. These claims obviously paint a rocky picture at NetEase, as the report also notes that Ding had set a goal in 2018 for the company to generate half its revenue from overseas by investing in developers like the creator of Yakuza, Toshihiro Nagoshi – except Nagoshi’s project is now a bit uncertain too, though the report notes his project has apparently been given time to wrap up ongoing projects.

None of the layoffs that have taken place in the past couple of years are justifiable, but it certainly seems downright bonkers to do so for a game like Marvel Rivals that is almost guaranteed to be printing money right now. NetEase did note in relation to the announcement of layoffs that the “core development team” in China “remains fully committed to delivering an exceptional experience,” but time will tell if it can keep up with those optimistic plans to release a new hero every 45 days.