Disney's Diablo-Style Game, Marvel Heroes, Shuts Down Soon

Update: The official Twitter account for Marvel Heroes has shared a message from the development team announcing the shutdown. It states that servers will remain online through the end of the year, shutting down after December 31, 2017. Additionally, the ability to spend real-world money in-game will be removed "as soon as possible." It states, "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." The tweet also goes on to thank the community and employees for their support over the years. The original story follows.

Marvel Heroes, the free-to-play, Diablo-esque action game, is shutting down. Marvel announced the news today, revealing it has ended its business arrangement with developer Gazillion Entertainment.

In a statement shared with GameSpot, Marvel Entertainment stated, "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." This presumably applies to the PC version of the game (first released in 2013) and the Omega versions fully released on PS4 and Xbox One earlier this year. We've followed up with the company to find out more about the timeline for the game's shutdown.

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No further explanation was shared for the decision. Kotaku, which first reported the news, notes that updates and communications from Gazillion have been absent recently. A current and former employee told the site that some people were told to not come into work this week, so it appears this move has been brewing for some time.

As noted above, Marvel Heroes is an action-RPG in the mold of Diablo, but with a free-to-play business model. It features a wide variety of Marvel characters, with players able to obtain everyone from the Avengers to the Guardians of the Galaxy to Inhumans. We'll report back as we learn more about how Marvel is handling the shutdown.