The signs have been there for weeks, but now Marvel (under Disney) has confirmed that Gazillion Entertainment's Marvel Heroes video game has been shut down.
In a statement to Kotaku, a Marvel representative confirmed, “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.”
Marvel Heroes was first released for PC in 2013 as a free-to-play title in the same vein as Diablo. Earlier this year, it was ported to Xbox One and PS4.
Combining core gameplay elements of Diablo with the expansive library of characters from the Marvel Universe, players could band together and fight to take on Doctor Doom and other iconic Marvel villains. Though the game was designed to be free-to-play, players could spend real money to purchase characters and costumes for them.
This news may come as a bit of a surprise to some, but many of the game's playerbase had begun to suspect something when developer Gazillion missed four of its weekly community updates and failed to release content that tied-in to the recently released Thor: Ragnarok movie.