In a statement given to Kotaku on November 15th, Disney/Marvel announced that they had terminated their relationship with developer Gazillion Entertainment and that all Marvel Heroes games would be shut down. Later in the day the official Marvel Heroes homepage was updated with the following farewell message and further details:
“We’re sad to inform our players and our entire Marvel Heroes family that Marvel Heroes Omega will be shutting down.
The Marvel Heroes servers will stay on until Dec 31, 2017, and we’ll be removing real money purchases as soon as possible. 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.
We’ve had the privilege of entertaining and collaborating with our players for over four years. We’re extremely humbled by that privilege and wanted to get this message out: Thank you. Thank you to our players, our tireless employees, and everyone involved in the life of Marvel Heroes, Marvel Heroes 2015, Marvel Heroes 2016, and Marvel Heroes Omega.”
The news is not entirely unexpected by fans of the game who have seen promised content updates slip and official social media accounts go quiet over the past weeks and months. Massively Overpowered has been chronicling the events surrounding Gazillion and sums it up rather nicely with this post.
As of this writing the game remains available to download and play for free on Steam and Xbox One. The PlayStation Store page for the game in North America (US and Canada) is currently unavailable but is still accessible from European territories (AU, EU, FR, DE).
The date has been added to the Watch List calendar and a full page will be coming soon to the site as the end of the year rolls around.