The founder and CEO of NetEase, William Ding, almost cancelled Marvel Rivals entirely, according to a new report

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.

Amidst the abrupt layoffs of some employees who worked Marvel Rivals, it's now reported that the game's cancelation was considered prior to its release, which is a surprising revelation, given it has already surpassed 40 million players.

According to a recent Bloomberg report, NetEase came close to cancelling Marvel Rivals entirely because it didn’t want to pay Disney for the use of its iconic Marvel heroes and villains.

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.