After weeks of radio silence from developer Gazillion Entertainment regarding its free-to-play game Marvel Heroes, a Marvel spokesperson has confirmed that Disney has ended its relationship with the developer/publisher and will be shutting down the game.
In an e-mail to Kotaku, a Marvel representative wrote: “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. We would like to sincerely thank the players who joined the Marvel Heroes community, and will provide any further updates as they become available.”
For weeks Marvel Heroes players have suspected something as Gazillion had missed its last four weekly community updates, and failed to update the game with content that ties in to the recently released Marvel film Thor: Ragnarok.
Developed in the same vein as Diablo, Marvel Heroes combined action-RPG elements with the expansive library of characters from the Marvel Universe. The entire game was free-to-play, giving players the option to purchase playable characters like Spider-Man and Squirrel Girl, as well as costumes for them.
It's unclear why Disney and Marvel chose to end their relationship with Gazillion, but it sounds like the game got off to a pretty rocky start. According to Kotaku, who sourced one current and two former Gazillion employees, there were at least three rounds of layoffs at the company within a year of the game's PC launch back in 2013. The free-to-play game was ported to Xbox One and PS4 earlier this year, but apparently that did little to help the struggling game.