Marvel Heroes Omega Will Be Shutting Down

kotaku.com/marvel-heroes-developer-gazillion-apparently-lays-off-e-1820695861

Marvel Heroes Developer Gazillion Apparently Lays Off Everyone On Thanksgiving Eve

Gazillion, the studio behind the embattled Marvel Heroes, has apparently been shut down today, with all staff laid off the day before Thanksgiving. As a result the game will also be closing early; originally due to end in December, it’ll now cease operations on Friday.

Multiple former employees have taken to Twitter to announce the layoffs, which come not long after Disney’s decision to “end [its] relationship” with the developer.

Making matters worse, ex-Gazillion staff are also reporting that they’re not even being paid their severance or PTO, and that their medical insurance will end next week.

Last week, PlayStation and Xbox players began the process of asking for refunds for the money they had spent on a game (that’s less than six months old!) that would no longer be playable.

Wow. Classy move firing everyone the day before Thanksgiving, with no severance benefits.

I was actually planning on trying to find some time to play again before the game shut down as originally announced at the end of December. I doubt I'll find much time for it between now and the new end day of tomorrow...

I got sucked into a MMORPG years ago and it literally took over my life, to the point there was apparently talk of doing some kind of intervention on me before I came to my senses(I got really sick with the flu and it gave me enough of a forced break from playing to get some perspective on how out of hand it had gotten). That gaming stuff gets addictive. That's partly why I was as tentative as I was with getting into Marvel Heroes Omega or any other open-ended gaming.

I tried it out when it was new but didn't stick with it. After they added Iceman to the game, I considered going back several times, but I could see how combining my love of Iceman and playing him in an open-ended gaming environment like that could become a real problem for me. Issues with my computer and internet gave me a good out.

There's been a TON of shady stuff with Gazillion, the company that developed and ran Marvel Heroes Omega.

The CEO that took over a while back, David Von Dorman, aka Dave Dohrmann (that's his actual real name which he had to change for reasons that a google search should illustrate) had a history with sexually harassing and being a general pervert to female employes.

Gazillion was also no longer making enough money to cover the licensing cost from Disney/Marvel from the PC version alone, so they rushed out a console version. It had a lot of problems and they basically nerfed the PC version thinking it would be ending and they wouldn't have to have compatibility...then Marvel renewed their license at the last minute for the PC version and it was too late to undo the damage(though they had apparently made a lot of headway on fixing things in recent months and had some awesome new designs waiting to go into the game).

It was a combination of a bunch of different things...cooperate mismanagement, CEO accused of bad things...lack of revenue...and Disney/Marvel finally just refused to renew their license. After that, Gazillion was done, but it was really the final nail in the coffin.

I feel sorry for the employees that were treated like that, especially so close to the holidays, but I also feel sorry for the console gamers who just got in in the last few months. Microsoft is apparently doing a good job with refunding XBox players, but I'm hearing it's a very different story for PlayStation owners stuck dealing with Sony.