'Marvel Heroes' Game Shut Down By Disney

One would think that, financially, Disney could do no wrong. The global mega-corporation has its fingers in all sorts of pies, from theme parks, to the biggest name in sports media in ESPN and, of course, massive franchises like Marvel and Disney. However, the latest news out of the world of video games shows that Disney has yet to fully figure that business out.

According to Kotaku, Disney has shut down Marvel Heroes, a Diablo -esque role-playing game starring all of your favorite Marvel superheroes that originally launched in 2013. The announcement did not give specifics regarding shutdown times for the free-to-play PC, PS4 and Xbox One game.

“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,” Marvel told Kotaku. “We would like to sincerely thank the players who joined the Marvel Heroes community, and will provide any further updates as they become available.”

Marvel Heroes launched in 2013 as a pretty straightforward Diablo clone. Its main selling point was that the combat was fun and it had a large cast of popular and obscure playable Marvel superheroes at the player’s disposal, each with a battery of unlockable costumes, unique abilities and upgradeable skill trees. Over time, it morphed into more of a massively multiplayer online game with its latest major development being a PS4 and Xbox One release earlier this year.

As Mashable puts it, Marvel Heroes attracted a loyal fanbase over its first couple of years thanks to steadily increasing quality and regular updates from developer Gazillion. Over time, though, the updates slowed down and PC players felt ignored in favor of the console launch. Kotaku reports that 80-hour work weeks and layoffs were a fixture at Gazillion after the game’s launch. Apparently, Gazillion recently missed several planned weekly updates as well as the expected Thor Ragnarok tie-in content release and Halloween event.

This development falls neatly into the pattern of Disney or Disney-adjacent video games being unable to find long-term success and stay afloat. Despite Disney’s best-in-class stable of properties that might seem like a video game goldmine, the past several years have proven to be anything but for the company’s gaming efforts.

Business Insider’s Ben Gilbert put together a definitive history of how things went wrong for Disney’s gaming division last year when the toys-to-life game Disney: Infinity surprisingly shut down. Infinity was a promising business venture for Disney, as it combined the obvious profitability of toy sales with a high quality video game. It was the final nail in the coffin for Disney’s in-house gaming outfit, after the arcade racing game Split/Second failed to make an impression and the promising Pirates of the Caribbean: Armada of the Damned was unceremoniously cancelled earlier this decade.

It is unknown at this time whether or not Marvel Heroes will get a formal send-off event like some online games do when they get shut down. Kotaku makes it sound like there is not much of an active development team left at this point, but we will see.