Following an extremely sudden cut to the Marvel Rivals development team, it appears NetEase is going through even larger internal discussions about releasing an

Marvel Rivals is a big hit, but there was a time when its very existence was in doubt. That's according to a new Bloomberg report on developer NetEase and its CEO William Ding, which says that before the game was released there were discussions about cancelling it outright. NetEase has denied the claim.

Marvel Rivals has been a huge hit for NetEase. The Chinese publisher recently reported the free-to-play hero shooter had over 40 million players. But the Overwatch clone was almost canceled over the licensing fees the company would owe to Disney for using its popular comic book characters.

In Marvel Rivals' case, NetEase says it's being used to provide "confidential information like damage and healing statistics" and allowing players to "selectively ban heroes, predict opponents' ultimate abilities, and more, severely undermining the fairness of our game."

Marvel Rivals launched its big mid-season update, adding two new characters, a fresh map, and some balance tweaks. But the developer behind the online character shooter also warned PC players to stop using a popular piece of software,

As Marvel Rivals continues to rise in popularity and the game’s competitive side heats up, players are looking for every possible advantage they can get. The Blitz third-party plugin recently emerged as a popular software for players looking to get more insight during a match,