Marvel Heroes

Marvel Heroes is closing down after Disney and Gazillion part ways

Despite getting a major overhaul in January, free-to-play MMO Marvel Heroes is being shut down after Disney and developer studio Gazillion Entertainment decided to end their relationship.

The news comes after a rocky couple of months for Gazillion, who fell silent regarding future updates and failed to deliver a scheduled Halloween event as well as and planned Thor: Ragnarok DLC. Two notable community managers also vacated the game’s official forums, leaving fans entirely in the dark regarding the future of the MMO.

Disney confirmed in a statement to Kotaku that support for Marvel Heroes had ended, and thanked fans for all their enthusiasm since it launched back in 2013. The outlet also reported that it had heard from three employees of Gazillion, who had shared that there had been three rounds of layoffs in the first year of launch, and that this week, there had been a number of members of staff who had been told to stay at home.

Jeff Donias, former creative director on Marvel Heroes, told Kotaku: ‘[The lay-offs] would definitely not be the fault of the internal men and women who actually worked on the game itself or served the customers… It was a real thing that people didn’t see their families as much as they should, or sacrificed their health to work an 80-hour week when an important patch deadline was looming… The patch release schedule, especially when PC was the main focus, was aggressively insane.’

Servers will be closed on 31 December, 2017, and the ability to buy items in-game will be removed imminently. However, players will be able to access all of the game’s paid content free of charge until termination at the end of the year.

So, if you’ve been vying to try out Marvel Heroes, it’s now or never buddy.