Marvel Heroes will be shutting its doors at some point in the future, Kotaku reports. Disney/Marvel has decided to end its partnership with Gazillion Entertainment after over 4 years. While the PC version has been around since 2013, and has kept a decently sized community, the console ports only released this year. Many of us in the community "saw the writing on the wall" with how the content releases were coming and with the developer's radio silence but this is still sad nonetheless.

No specific date has been given for when the game will shutter permanently. Paid DLC is still being released.

After how much they fucked the game up after the new skill system was released, it's no surprise. It hemorraghed most of its players afterwards.

I don't think I have even touched Marvel Heroes this year, but it's still the most played game in my Steam Library. I think I own over 50 different heroes and dozens of costumes and I spent maybe $20 once to get more bag space a few years ago.

It was a very fun game, especially in the beginning, but it was horribly mismanaged for years. Things got a lot worse once Brevik left, and I think a lot of players saw this coming a mile away. RIP.

Diablo + Super Heroes what could go wrong? 400 different end game currencies, and having to reset my skills every time I logged in.

It's still a shame, the game was super fun when it first was out. I never spent money on it but still ended up with a ton of characters to play. Feel like that wasn't even an option in the lastest version.

Didn't this just launch on ps4 with giant expensive founders packs?

That's so disappointing. I haven't been deep into an MMO in years; they're just too big of a commitment, but Marvel Heroes was this fairly original take on it that was easy to pick up and easy to play. The powers felt cool and it was an F2P game that it didn't feel like you needed to just pour money into, even in the higher level areas. I'll miss it.

@bradbrains: Paid beta phase in may, then a full release in June.

Getting into the beta is what the founder's pack were for. (I bought the Guardians of the Galaxy one for $40).

@mike: yeah, for a good 2 years I was using the "buy a character" route to treat it as a tip jar.

That really sucks. Especially since I spent about $60 on that game in the few months that I've been playing it. I wish I'd known this was going to happen sooner. Too bad they can't rework the game assets to change characters a bit to work without the marvel licence. I'd love to play as Patriotic Shield Guy, Spider-Person, Big Green Meanie, Chipmunk Girl, Moon Squire or ...Thor.

@bradbrains: Yeah that's what I thought, it just released a few months ago

RIP - that first year or so on the PC it was pretty neat - but like others have said, the dozens of currencies and constant respeccing got to be ridiculous.

The cynical part of me is telling me that those Marvel mobile games are probably raking in much more money.

Oof. I liked what little I played of the gameplay, but the insane number of currencies threw me off hard. Couldn't quite get over the clutter of that main hub area, either. I guess that's every massive-multiplayer thing out there after a while in existence, but yeah.

This is sad but not too surprising. The "quality" of the consoles versions was so low, and they were so devoid of mechanics and features that the PC versions had, important and minor, that it was clear the console versions were hastily made with no plan for longevity. Combined with that really bad version of the game and their losing the FF license on PC, this was the next logical step.

Shame really. The game was in a great spot in 2015. They just had to keep fucking with it and keep fiddling with it, even though it worked, and they made it worse and worse over time.

This is kind of surprising! I thought this thing was making a bunch of money.

Its a good game but they didn't seem to want to take their player base's criticism to heart and do what they wanted to do instead. Steam forum was just a long series of "how did they mess this up" "this game is dead" posts lol.

I finally got into it this year and had a good time, even spent some money on it. Think i have some left so i may hop on before the servers die.

FYI, this has nothing to do with the quality or performance of the game and everything to do with Gazillion's shitbag of a CEO.

Not my vid, but a good summary of what's been going on:

Such a disappointment. I enjoyed what I played on PC, and was waiting for the PS4 version to get more optimized in order to dive in further. Guess I won't be doing that anymore.

I put more time into Marvel Heroes than I did into Diablo 3. I enjoyed the time I spent with the game and they even got me to buy costumes.

Poor Jeff :(

This is kind of sad. I was really into this game for a while and bought some character packs (really enjoyed the Kate Bishop/Hawkeye skin), so it wasn't just another "free" game for me. I paid out because I enjoyed playing and felt the developers deserved compensation for providing me with so much entertainment. Having said that it's been about a year since I logged on, so I don't know what horrible changes were made. With the end being nigh, I am not sure I'd get much benefit spending more time in the game world. It's a sad reminder that some things you liked once will one day suddenly disappear.

This game was with me through some shit and I am bummed to see it go, even though I have not really played it much the last like 6 months or so. Hopefully this paves the way to a better game, maybe that deal Squeenix has with Marvel will end up with a fresh take on the genre.

Hopefully Gazillion can get things together and get rid of reigning CEO Pedobear, because the company overall does seem like a good group of people. Thanks to the super group Batman Batman Batman, we had some good times.

Also perfect example of fuck games as a service. There's no reason this couldn't/shouldn't have been an offline single player game that also had online co-op.

The game is closing December 31. This is actually a good time to dip back in as everything in the store is so cheap as to be essentially free. Like 5 loot boxes are 1 eternity splinter, and you are almost guaranteed to get more splinters. You can load up on boosters and level up whatever character you like pretty fast.

the official post said everything will be free so i wouldn't spend any money on anything at all.

... Of course this happens just as Sabretooth is confirmed playable.

Their "BIGGEST UPDATE EVER" killed the game for me and a lot of others, and a lot of the staff at Gaz that was responsible for the cool shit was gone by now. This was bound to happen.

Still blows. There was a point in time (around 2015-2016) where this game ruled.

So everything is going to be free in 2018 but it won't be online anymore - it'll be singleplayer since they're taking away servers? I saw people in IGN's comments saying Microsoft was giving Xbox users refunds if they spent money on the game in the last few months.

The game had an awful business model as far as the pricing of heroes, but the game itself was very good for what it tried and wanted to be. It would be funny if the devs went to DC and just made the same game there.

If there are any Marvel Heroes here looking for a new home, Diablo 3's latest patch rebalanced a lot of end game set pieces and bumped up the legendary/set drop rates and also a lot of the content that I found to be a PITA in the past (infernal machines, greater rifts, leveling gems, etc) has been streamlined massively. Like it's crazy, I got tired of the game before cause drop rates were low and the pacing was slow and I never got past the earlier torment levels, now characters power up exponentially once you complete a set and the max Torment level is farmed easily. And season 12 kicked off recently so the player base has seen quite a spike so it's a pretty good time to revisit it.

@deathstriker: I thought that as well for a second, but apparently that's not what is happening.

Sometime between now and 12/31, they will remove all Microtransactions from the game, so all items will be free until shutdown.

What they're doing right now is just as good, however. On PC, they're giving everyone 1000Gs(microtransaction currency) per day when you log in, and every item in the store (even bundles) is 50g.

On Console, everything is 1 crystal, and you already start with 226 crystals, plus earn more as you go along.

@deathstriker: No at some point before it closes everything will be free, they said they will announce it as soon as possible. They are also taking all the microtransactions off, according to the post on their forum anyway. https://forums.marvelheroes.com/discussion/330038/official-statement-from-gazillion

Yeah I wasn't suggesting anyone pay money. Every item in the store is 1 crystal, including every hero and costume, and 5 packs of each type of loot box and booster. So if you ever wanted to open up an unlimited number of loot boxes in a free to play game, here's your chance.

I guess it's a little sad, just because I spent a fair amount on this game myself, but it doesn't feel premature. Most of the Marvel roster was exhausted and the gameplay hasn't really changed all that much. It feels very much like an old game these days. I don't know if I'll give it one last run for old time's sake; it's a huge download.