XPost: rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks, alt.disney, sac.politics
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Gazillion Entertainment shut down on Wednesday just ahead of the
Thanksgiving holiday, according to Kotaku. The move to lay off
all staff came after Disney severed ties with the company and
announced that Gazillion’s Marvel Heroes game would shut down.

The game was originally due to shut on December 31, but the
company also got hit with a lot of requests for refunds, Kotaku
said. Gazillion didn’t make an announcement, but numerous
employees relayed what they were told.

Today we were told no severance. Not even paying out PTO. Good
job, Gaz. I feared this would happen so I appreciate all the
support you’ve given to shasta :https://t.co/aWyk0ja8Jh

— Anthony Gallegos (@Chufmoney) November 23, 2017 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The employees said they are not being paid severance or paid
time off, and that their medical insurance ends next week. In a
statement, Disney had said earlier, “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.”

It’s a sad Thanksgiving for those associated with the company,
which has had a rich history. The San Mateo, Calif.-based
Gazillion had legendary ambitions as a maker of massively
multiplayer online role-playing games.

Rob Hutter, the former head of Revolution Ventures, founded
Gazillion with Doom co-creator John Romero in 2005 in an effort
to create MMO games that could rival Blizzard’s World of
Warcraft. Over time, Hutter raised more than $250 million for
Gazillion, and he got the deal for a Marvel MMO in 2009.
Previously, Cryptic Studios had a license to make a Marvel MMO,
but that game was cancelled in 2007. MMOs proved to be hard to
make and World of Warcraft was the toughest of rivals.

Romero’s own game was canceled and his Slipgate Ironworks
division was shut down. About a year after that, Romero left.
The industry also shifted from premium subscription games to
free-to-play online games with microtransactions. That prompted
big changes at Gazillion, which at its peak had more than 350
employees.

David Brevik, co-creator of Diablo and one of the former
Blizzard North leaders, spent 6.5 years at the company. In early
2011, Brevik was named president and chief operating officer of
Gazillion. Shortly after that, John Needham, former head of
Cryptic Studios, replaced Hutter as CEO in 2011. One of the
games that Gazillion shipped was Marvel Super Hero Squad, built
by the now-defunct The Amazing Society studio in Seattle. That
studio was run by Jason Robar and Jay Minn, and they focused on
creating a family-friendly Marvel game for kids. Their game
helped keep Gazillion afloat.

Brevik’s game was a version for adults, and it was renamed
Marvel Heroes. It launched in 2013. Around that time, David
Dohrmann, a board member who was then at Roth Capital Partners,
and investors at Oak Investment Partners recapitalized the
company, meaning they took control and put more money into the
firm. Brevik became CEO.

Marvel Heroes was buggy at launch, and the developers had to fix
it. They relaunched it in 2014, and its average Metacritic
rating rose from 58 out of 100 to 81 after a number of key
adjustments to content and the pricing model. The company did a
further update and renamed Marvel Heroes as Marvel Heroes 2015.
The game was a moderate success in its new form, but Gazillion
laid off some staff in September 2015. Brevik resigned as CEO in
January 2016, and Dohrmann took over.

Dohrmann, who later changed his name to David Von Dorman,
attempted to reboot the company and launched the PlayStation 4
version of the Marvel Heroes — dubbed Marvel Heroes Omega —
earlier this year. Von Dorman said early results were good, but
apparently the players didn’t stick around.

In an email, Von Dorman said, “It’s obviously been a really
difficult period – a turn of events that is very hard to fathom.
You know we were very committed to building Gazillion and we
were on that trajectory – but yes, sadly due to a series of
events that happened at an incredible pace (the last 30 days)
the company is preparing to wind down. I can tell you that above
anything else, the management team tried as best we could to
make sure our employees would be treated with respect and given
severance packages. It is heart breaking that things ended up
this way, but as mentioned our intent has always been to take
care of our people. If we could have done this differently we
would have.”

I interviewed each of Gazillion’s leaders over the years, and it
was sad to see the company’s decline. Sorry to deliver a downer
on Thanksgiving, but this is one of those cases where I cover a
company from cradle to grave.

https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/23/marvel-heroes-publisher- gazillion-shuts-down-after-disney-severs-ties/

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