The founder and CEO of NetEase, William Ding, almost cancelled Marvel Rivals entirely, according to a new report

Following an extremely sudden cut to the Marvel Rivals development team, it appears NetEase is going through even larger internal discussions about releasing an

Marvel Rivals is a big hit, but there was a time when its very existence was in doubt. That's according to a new Bloomberg report on developer NetEase and its CEO William Ding, which says that before the game was released there were discussions about cancelling it outright. NetEase has denied the claim.

According to a report from Bloomberg, the cuts to the North American team working on Marvel Rivals aren’t an anomaly. NetEase founder and CEO William Ding is reported to have cut hundreds of jobs, closed studios, and taken a firmer hand with the company’s Japanese teams — including the one led by former Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio head Toshihiro Nagoshi.

Amidst the abrupt layoffs of some employees who worked Marvel Rivals, it's now reported that the game's cancelation was considered prior to its release, which is a surprising revelation, given it has already surpassed 40 million players.

According to a recent Bloomberg report, NetEase came close to cancelling Marvel Rivals entirely because it didn’t want to pay Disney for the use of its iconic Marvel heroes and villains.

NetEase's Marvel Rivals can't be described as anything less than a hit, netting ten million players in just three days from launch and raking in millions for developer NetEase in the weeks since. But a new report suggests that NetEase CEO and founder William Ding nearly canceled the game due to a reluctance to use licensed IP.