NetEase confirms Marvel Rivals esports plans

NetEase Games, the game developer behind Marvel Rivals, has confirmed its focus on developing its esports ecosystem to drive growth.

The confirmation came during the latest Q4 2024 Earnings Call held by the company (NetEase, Inc., NTES) on February 20th. According to the transcript of the call, Bill Pang, Vice President of Corporate Development at NetEase, stated that it will announce esports plans to further ‘enhance the overall gaming ecosystem.’

“Marvel Rivals, especially after Season 1, has gained wide appraisal from worldwide players. And this is a product we’re going to keep investing both on development and marketing. And we do believe this product, we’re going to keep operating, keep enhancing, keep investing for 10 years and beyond,” said Pang when asked about the growth strategy the company plans to apply to the shooter game.

NetEase has recently announced the inaugural edition of the Marvel Rivals Championship, the esports tournament which is set to take place from March 8th, 2025 until April 6th, 2025, featuring a prize pool of $14,500 (~£11,600).

Meanwhile, the company recently took headlines after announcing layoffs of a design team based in Seattle that works for a larger global design function in support of Marvel Rivals. During the call, Pang also addressed the layoff situation:

“When we allocate resources among different products across different studios, no matter domestically or including our overseas studios, we pay a lot of attention to a lot of key attributes, for example, the quality of the work […]

“If they are really high quality, meeting the future market demand, actually, we’re going to double down. So it’s all about the product itself, the quality, the development, efficiency, is it going to meet the ever-growing user expectation because game development is a long cycle — it’s a three-year, four-year, five-year cycle.”

While the company did not disclose the total number of employees laid off, it was confirmed that no developers based in Seattle are working on the game anymore.

“When we charge a project, we have some assumptions. And doing that development process, we’ll keep monitoring to see if the product is going to be able to meet the future demand and to do resource allocation adjustment,” added Pang.

Launched on December 6th, 2024, Marvel Rivals rose as one of the most popular hero shooters in the world.

Since its launch on December 6th, 2024, Marvel Rivals has become one of the most popular hero shooters in the world. The game topped Steam’s global top sellers chart, amassing over 10 million users within 72 hours. In the earnings call, it was confirmed that the game has already reached over 40 million to date.