The free-to-play game Marvel Heroes Omega (for PC/Mac, PS4, and XBone) has officially had all services permanently discontinued and servers shut down effective today. This is following Disney's recent decision to cut ties with the game's developer, Gazillion Entertainment, last week on Nov. 15th. The official statement from Disney read: "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."

As a result of the news, Gazillion issued an official statement on their forums saying that "The Marvel Heroes servers will stay on until Dec 31, 2017, and we’ll be removing real money purchases as soon as possible. Players will be able to play the game entirely for free once this sunset period commences. We will share the exact date things go completely free as soon as we can", but on Nov. 22nd, Thanksgiving eve, their entire staff were laid off and the game's closure was abruptly bumped up to today, the 24th. Two employees of Gazillion, Anthony Gallegos and Andrew Hair, had taken to twitter on Nov. 22nd to report that none of the developers are receiving severance or PTO payouts, with coverage for medical insurance ending in just 8 days. The announcement to close the game was made by the devs through their official Discord server on the 22nd.

This was a game with a free-to-play model, so microtransactions were the core source of revenue for the company. With the sudden closure of the game, players have begun to request refunds for content, on which some have paid upwards of $400. Unfortunately, all requests for refunds were initially denied, with Microsoft later deciding to offer a 90-day grace period for refunds. Apparently, Gazillion's terms of service for this game had always stated that the company reserved the right to terminate the game, as well as any previously purchased in-game content, at any time and at their discretion, a clause which is apparently very common in games with this F2P model. This is just yet another example of the transience and instability of digital goods purchased in video games.

For context: the first iteration of this game, known simply as 'Marvel Heroes', had a very rough launch in 2014, scoring an average 58 on metacritic and copious amounts of bugs and imbalances being reported by the player-base. The company made many updates to the game in an effort to correct these issues in a 2015 revision which game to be known as 'Marvel Heroes 2015.' Following this update, the average metacritic score rose to 81, and the game enjoyed a moderate financial success, though Gazillion was still forced to lay off some staff. Then, in January of 2016, David Brevik resigned from his position as CEO at Gazillion and David Von Dorman took over his position.

Dorman then attempted to reboot the company earlier this year with the game's final revision known as 'Marvel Heroes Omega'. While he reported that early results with the game were promising, it was having difficulty keeping players engaged and playing. In an email Dorman sent to VentureBeat, he said that “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.” The console version of this latest revision of the game was just around 6 months old at the time of closure, meaning players had very little time to enjoy their purchases before they disappeared forever. It's more than likely that it was the game's rough launch and its subsequent inability to get back on its feet over the next 3 years which contributed most to Disney's termination of their contract.

 

[dimmidice]

But you can still play the core game.

Yeah, but this is a MMO. If servers shut down you can't play them even if you have the physical discs.... that's kinda obvious no? If you have a non online game downloaded you can still play it too.

Physical games tend to not be online only nor do you lose the game, if servers shutdown.

Total rubbish. Lots of MMOs or online games have physical releases. You should've said "that's why i play offline games" and then you'd have a point.

 

[migles]

and if they had a physical copy, they wouldnt have to be connected to the server?

it's one of thoose free to play server sided online only games...
i think this explains your confusion?
even if you had a phisical copy, it's server sided, the data you got in disc is just like a dead corpse

edit: quoted the wrong person

 

[Noctosphere]

it's one of thoose free to play server sided online only games...
i think this explains your confusion?
even if you had a phisical copy, it's server sided, the data you got in disc is just like a dead corpse

edit: quoted the wrong person

Its okay, its been explained to me already.
The guy said its why people.prefer physical copy,.but there wasnt any physical.copy of this game... he made non sense actually, i understood.since.the beginning.but just wanted to be sure i really did

 

[Yil]

Can someone explain the lady Spider-Man? She looks pretty cool.

Gwen Stacy of a parallel universe known as Spider Woman.

 

[Noctosphere]

Gwen Stacy of a Parallel Universe known as Spider Woman.

Huh? What are those number?

 

[Yil]

Huh? What are those number?

Earth 616 is the main continuity, 1610 is the ultimate Earth (where everyone is a d***, and let's just say Loki has Odin's blood in this one).

 

[migles]

in the perfect world, and IMHO there should be a law to enforce this.
when you buy stuff (with lets say a minimum of 20-50 bucks) in these server sided games, or games that require online activation, there should be a consumer protection that when the company desires do shutdown the servers, they must provide software or a way to the people create and run their own servers.
this way it would be fair and stuff wouldn't be lost..

the thing is.. they don't do this for several reasons like:
main reason to shutdown games is money expenses, providing the users with a server software requires spending money to build a consumer server tool
people would be able to deploy their own customs servers, or heavily modify to turn into other games and start to do a business out of it
companies would avoid this by creating a demo mode, or a basic campaign mode to say "you can still play the game"

 

[Yil]

in the perfect world, and IMHO there should be a law to enforce this.
when you buy stuff (with lets say a minimum of 20-50 bucks) in these server sided games, or games that require online activation, there should be a consumer protection that when the company desires do shutdown the servers, they must provide software or a way to the people create and run their own servers.
this way it would be fair and stuff wouldn't be lost..

the thing is.. they don't do this for several reasons like:
main reason to shutdown games is money expenses, providing the users with a server software requires spending money to build a consumer server tool
people would be able to deploy their own customs servers, or heavily modify to turn into other games and start to do a business out of it

You know getting private server still invalidate all your purchases, right? Besides the platforms will never let it pass.

 

[migles]

You know it still invalidate all your purchases, right?

if you have your own custom server you can restore them and have access to all..
so you would technically still have your purchases, you just had to edit them in, if you got the server you have power for that, wich custom servers you could also edit in game currency, and give you tons of premium currency to buy it again

 

[Yil]

if you have your own custom server you can restore them and have access to all..
so you would technically still have your purchases, you just had to edit them in, if you got the server you have power for that, wich custom servers you could also edit in game currency, and give you tons of premium currency to buy it again

Why would they though? It's not like someone running the server has legal right (at the same time responsibility) over it.

 

[LufianGuy]

The game is still up at the moment and people don't know when it will die. I was excited to have a month to play everything in the game for free (any hero, any costume until December 31st) after playing for about 4 months previously and didn't expect a refund on cash spent, but it sucks to see what I saw as their last parting gift has been taken away.

 

[KingVamp]

Total rubbish. Lots of MMOs or online games have physical releases. You should've said "that's why i play offline games" and then you'd have a point.

I do have a point. There are much more games that aren't MMOs or online only games than they are, on physical media. Also, as I said, if they was a game on a digital store ,whether it relied on online or not, it can be taken and shutdown at anytime. Physical media is much more reliable, when it comes to longevity. That was the point.

In fact, I can't really think of many games that are literally online only on physical media. Physically media tends to have both or offline play.

 

[XavyrrVaati]

don't buy into micro transactions and expect your money back

 

[willebug]

Can someone explain the lady Spider-Man? She looks pretty cool.

I think that is Spider-Gwen. She's from one of the alternate Earth timelines.

 

[RustInPeace]

I think that is Spider-Gwen. She's from one of the alternate Earth timelines.

Well while I'm questioning comic book stuff, how about Superior Spider-Man? Is he in this game? I heard it's Doc-Op possessing Parker's body and being badass or whatever.

 

[dimmidice]

In fact, I can't really think of many games that are literally online only on physical media. Physically media tends to have both or offline play.

Your ignorance doesn't change reality. FFXIV, Swtor, WoW, all have physical releases.

 

[KingVamp]

Your ignorance doesn't change reality. FFXIV, Swtor, WoW, all have physical releases.

Apparently you miss the many part. Not to mention, this is coming from a mainly console player POV, so that lowers the margin even more so. Doesn't matter, most physical games aren't online or mmo only games. Anyway, just going to stop here.

 

[pedro702]

Its okay, its been explained to me already.
The guy said its why people.prefer physical copy,.but there wasnt any physical.copy of this game... he made non sense actually, i understood.since.the beginning.but just wanted to be sure i really did

well i see it this way with people buying digital games on ps4,xb1 and such imagne you buyt alot of games and at some point your hdd is full and you want to save some space and delete the main content from afew of those games for the new ones, you think oh i can always redownload it latter when i want to replay it, but then bam ps3 or xbox30 or ps4 or xb1 servers got shutdown, they willl eventualy no server last forever so now you can ever play that game you actualy bough becuase you cant redownload it since no store is available again.

i always buy my games phisicaly, imagine manny online only games on ps3/xbox360 when they shut down the store(shouldnt take even 2 years imo) no one will ever be able to play those games ever again unless you have your console with the game already installed wich is crap.


Sure for this game it doesnt really matter since its an mmo that relies on servers and nothing else, but on other games it makes alot of diference.


For instance EA destroyed the PHISICAL release of cod wwII becuase the game disc alone is useless and cant be played at all, only works after a 9gb patch, which makes it worthless having the disc lol when ps4 servers get shutdown if you buy an used disc you wont be abel to play the game at all lol it makes no sence turning phisical releases into a mandatory online download.

 

[PoppaDre]

This game sounds so cool!

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

Can't imagine dumping hundreds into a F2P game that could be shut down just as easily the next day. Sucks to suck, I guess. Hope those players learned their lesson about buying into microtransactions.

 

[Subtle Demise]

Seems like the only way to succeed in the games industry is to not work for one of the big names. Instead it's best to create some unexplainable indie success like Minecraft or Flappy Bird (the Pet Rock of the games industry).