Marvel Heroes is now officially dead (Updated)

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The initial shutdown announcement said the game would run until the end of the year.

Update 2: Despite suggestions Marvel Heroes would run until the end of the year, the free-to-play MMO has now been officially shuttered. Developer Gazillion Entertainment has also closed its doors. 

Last week, as reported below, it appeared this news might come sooner than expected—however the game's Twitter account has now confirmed its fate with the following statement: 

To this end, the Marvel Heroes website, Steam page and forums have also been closed down.

Update: 

Massively OP has been told that developer Gazillion will be shuttered entirely, and that instead of running until the end of the year, Marvel Heroes will be ended on November 24—tomorrow. The studio hasn't confirmed the unexpectedly early closure, but multiple Gazillion employees including engineer Andrew Hair and designers Brian Waggoner and Anthony Gallegos have tweeted about their termination. Worse, all three say that staff are being let go without any severance or paid time-off payouts.

Marvel Heroes remains available to play on Steam, but the DLC is now gone.   

Original story:

The free-to-play Diablo-like MMO Marvel Heroes got its "biggest update ever" in January, with an overhaul of all 59 heroes, a new difficulty slider and endgame progression system, and various other tweaks. Following that, in June of this year, a console version was released under the title Marvel Heroes Omega. Sadly for players, it didn't add up to much in the long run, as Marvel has confirmed in an email to Kotaku that the game is being shuttered. 

"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," a rep said. "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 has chugged along since its launch in 2013, but apparently not without issues. Multiple sources told Kotaku that there were at least three rounds of layoffs within the first year of release, while a current employee said that he'd been working on updates for the game over the past few months but was "not very confident" that they would ever get released. Gazillion itself has been showing signs of trouble as well, missing several weekly updates, a Halloween event, and the release of Thor: Ragnarok tie-in content.

A date for the actual shutdown hasn't been given. For now, Marvel Heroes remains available to play (and its DLC to buy) on Steam. I've reached out to Gazillion for more information. 

Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.