Looks like the staff aren't getting any severance or paid out on accrued vacation time, either.

Holy jesus, what a nightmare. Condolences to all those who not only lost their jobs, but were basically thrown out on to the street.

Yep, confirmed by Anthony. (also, please help out his pooch if you can!)

Hope lawsuits are filed and people get paid what they are owed, reading about the ceo I can't say i am surprised. The community got real toxic towards the developers which is a shame too.

I had started playing lately and was gonna level some more characters but i guess not now. And they did it on thanksgiving, smh some real scumbags running that company. Hope all the developers make it out ok.

What a crazy shitstorm. Such a shame. Marvel Heroes was great and the staff didn't deserve this.

@driadon Thanks for the heads up. I was a big fan of Anthony's for years; so sad to hear about his pup. Threw some green their way.

What a promising story for anyone looking to enlist in the video game industry.

Man..........

Interestingly this comes as Microsoft seem to be refunding most people's Xbox purchases. If Gazillion are completely dead and not even paying staff, I wonder who's taking the hit there.

got this off the forum

I really enjoyed Marvel Heroes and put some money into it. The push into the console market was pretty much the nail in the coffin for the game. They abandoned the PC client and all the people who supported the game through its tough launch. I feel for all those who lost their jobs especially around the holidays.

Well, this is going to be one hell of a lawsuit. Hope (or not) the owner of Gaz has some extra pants cuz the ones he's wearing are gonna get sued the eff off.

Best of luck to all the staff that put all their hard work and dedication into Marvel Heroes. That game wasn't for me but I know a lot of people were into it. Hope everyone lands on their feet.

Wow, what an underhanded bullshit move, especially right after Thanksgiving. Huh.

WWwwwwoooowww, holy shit the poor people that were working for Gazillion! This is a crazy situation to throw on someone in the holidays (sorry kids, christmas is cancelled) and I can only hope that the rest of the industry is lending out a hand in support and passing contacts around to help people land on their feet.

ooph, boy.

Holy shit, having the date moved up is already bad enough. Having that date be the day after Thanksgiving is extra fucked. And as if they wanted to make sure that all these former employees feel as shitty as possible, they aren't even guaranteeing them the possibility of coming in to clear out their stuff past Friday.

Fucking Christ. This isn't just a hot mess, it's a sad mess.

This is pretty messed up. My sympathy to the terminated employees.

Gazillion must be on the verge of bankruptcy for this to happen. There must have been some pretty shady shit going down for this to all collapse so suddenly.

WOW! That's some bullshit. I feel bad for all the employees.

Wow. That's some heinous fucking shit.

From what I've read about the management there though, perhaps completely in character? Christ.

@lanechanger: Problem is with all these studios closing, how many places do they really have to apply to or willing employers? what with the already huge amount of competition I'm sure. Seems a safer bet if you really want to stay in the industry to just start your own damn company (though not by very much).

As someone that works in Human Resources this is appalling. The absolute lack of any severance, pay out of accrued vacation, or even decent notice speaks to how bad the leadership must have been at Gazillion.

I would love to know if the lack of severance affected the management of the studio as well, or did they manage to get themselves a nest egg to walk away with.

Nobody's arguing that customers aren't getting screwend, nor that it doesn't matter.
It's the fact that the former devs are EXTRA screwed.

For the players, they might be out of luck for invested play-time and purchases;
things you gave up on your own volition.

For the devs, they're out of livelihoods: i.e. insurance, next month's rent/mortgage, food on the table;
necessities they didn't choose to give up.

No one said that. It's just putting things into perspective. People who were supporting their family and kids, mortgage payments and were relying on medical insurance suddenly got all of that stripped away from them with pretty much no notice. Contrasted with the customers who are either working or are gaming on their parent's money who, yeah, it's shitty too that you guys got screwed out of some money, but you guys still have an income or whatever source of money you were using to pay for the gaming goods, which is a luxury. So it's a drop in the bucket compared to what the devs have to go through. No one can take away your right to be angry or passive aggressive in the matter, but I doubt you'll find much sympathy either.

God this is shitty. I paid for content for content on PC and then kinda stopped playing when there were inklings it was coming to consoles, only put a couple of hours in wish I had put more in now (not saying I alone could have saved them)

@sweep: Yeah, especially given the time of year.

To announce a sudden closure is one thing but to do it like this at this time of year is just terrible and I believe somewhat indicative of the chaos behind the scenes at a higher level.

@ohagan: I got a layoff notice on the 19th of December a few years back.

@bmccann42: That sucks. Yeah the run up to Christmas and New Year is probably the worst time to get laid off. Especially if you have a young family to support.

I thought for sure MH would be making money - the movies, merchandise, and tie-ins all seem popular still

Played back when Brevik was running the show. Things seemed really positive back then, enjoyed the time I put into it. Even gave them money - not much, but it felt worth investing in even a small way.

Seems morbid at this point, but I really, really want to know exactly what happened between then (a few years at most) and now for this to end up as it had.

Leadership must be a big part of it, but there's gotta be a lot more which may never come out. Sucks for everyone either way

@ohagan: Oh yeah - recruiting at most companies shuts down for about a month due to the holidays and restarts most of the way through January in my experience.

Not fun for anyone with a family, debts, etc.

Holy crap. I thought EA would be winning worst video game company management of the year but this is worse.

A refreshing reminder that corporations aren't your friends!

I know there have been signs of trouble among the Gazillion management for a while, but this implosion still ended up feeling shockingly sudden and quick.

I hope all of the former employees quickly find a new gig. Losing a job always sucks but it's extra shitty when it happens like this.

I played a lot of it too back in the Brevik days. I was always really impressed with the community at the time. It's the only online game I have every played that had a welcoming and helpful global chat. It's my most played game on Steam and I put about $200 into it over my play time, which is by far the most I've ever put into a free-to-play game.

It seems like the management took a gamble making the console versions. They neglected the PC version for years to make it, then screwed up the console launch by making everything way more expensive than it was on PC and not having all the content.

The PC community definitely turned against Gaz, but for mostly good reasons. They had a rough launch on PC, but they mostly made good on it in the second and third years. Then they consistently failed to add new meaningful content (other than characters) while they worked on the console version. To be clear, I'm not defending anyone who was a jerk to the developers, that's a shitty move in almost any circumstance. I'm saying there were good reasons for PC players to stop supporting the game.

Actually felt a bit sad dropping all my crafting stuff and then uninstalling the game, "only" had about 170hrs in but i enjoyed my time with it. Put about 20 bux in over the summer.

Jesus, this is disgusting the way they're going about it. I feel really bad for the employees.

I'm very sad that Marvel Heroes is just disappearing in the blink of an eye like this, but more than that, I'm revolted by the way Gazillion are treating their employees. Given all the work that those developers must have put into their craft and given the reliance that any employee has on their employer, it's revolting that Gazillion would pull this kind of "Fuck you, got mine", and the worst part is that the management may be entirely unaccountable.

Man, what a fucked situation, hope all the devs can land on their feet and their scumbag CEO gets what he deserves >:(

This is absolutely insane

I just ended up going through the entire story mode of the game over the last couple of days. Shame I didn't give it a try sooner as I really liked what I got to play.

It is so terrible what has happened to the devs that worked on it. I can't imagine just losing my job like that with no notice and the day before Thanksgiving no less. I really hope they can all land on their feet quickly.

What sucks more is the implication of "You're nothing but a meaning of generating money for us and we can do whatever we want since all you can do is to have to obey us considering the terms we laid out when you started working with us", how inhuman and depressing. Whats worse is that this does not look great on ones résumé as well. In some cases you don't even recieve any sort of goodbye-letter that is prositively written about you.

I can really emphasize whenever spontanous layoffs happen since this sets the general predicament in how everyone can be threatened by such an act. All I see that this is getting worse and worse. Also this is obviously planned in preparation considering the last quote, which makes this even workse. I'm 100% certain this is not a spontainous decision at all and its just nobody has been told this before so nobody fights back, as its always been when it comes to spontanous layoffs.

If everone gets treated like some good rather than a human being in America then thats obviously a really gargantuan problem.

I hope that the people who made this decision gets a really, really bad stomach ache after their next meal and that they accidently step on an piece of LEGO when they're expecting that the least.

You monster!

Just heard they were moving the closing date up and they layed people off at Gazillion at one of the worst times of the year. Losing jobs is never fun so I can't take any positives out of this story. For those I played this game with the past 4-5 years in the giant bomb super guild it has been a pleasure.

o7

Damn! This was hands-down my favorite "background game" of the year. Perfect for keeping hands busy while I watched/listened to something else. I also kicked in a decent chunk of change cause of how much time I was spending on it (and I am a SUCKER for new skins), so hearing THIS is apparently what that money got is disheartening.

Holy cow... this is one of the most heartless things I've heard in the video game industry for... sadly, now that I realize it, not that long of a while :(

I don't know, I think this level of heartless hasn't been matched since Sigil Games Online's mass firing for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes.

Game is still live, at least on PS4. If anyone wants to get in some last minute goodbyes. (edit: nevermind, its done now.)

I was able to get the Platinum since it was still running over the weekend.

Regardless of the company and what happened to the employees, it was a good game to me.

What a shame. I played the game only a bit but it was pretty damn cool. Sucks the devs were treated this way.