Marvel Heroes is shutting down

At one time, Marvel Heroes was the closest thing to Ultimate Alliance 3 we could get. Now, it's all coming to an end. Marvel announced earlier today that it had ended its business ties with developer Gadzillion Entertainment, and the game will cease to be. In an email sent out earlier today, Marvel Entertainment had this to say:

"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."

Due to the need for the Marvel license, Gadzillion will be unable to keep the game online, which is a shame as Heroes only recently arrived on PS4 and Xbox One earlier this year. As far as an actual timeline for when the game will shut down remains unclear, hence the "further updates" that will be made in the future.

Updates on Marvel Heroes have been non-existent for some time now. The last announcement entry on the game's Steam page dates all the way back to July 14th, and as Kotaku points out, developer Gadzillion has missed four weekly community updates, sparking speculation that all was not well behind the scenes.

A current and former employee also told Kotaku that some of the studio's employees were told not to come into work this week, while another said that they had been developing features over the past few months that they weren't confident would get used.

Game development is a tough business. Best of luck that Gadzillion and its employees land on their feet.

[Gamespot, Kotaku]