Earlier this month, Marvel (and its owner, Disney) announced that they were parting ways with Marvel Heroes developer Gazillion Entertainment and that Marvel Heroes was to be shut down by the end of the year.

The Marvel Heroes team later confirmed in a statement that the free-to-play MMO was to remain active until the end of December, writing, “We’re sad to inform our players that and our entire Marvel Heroes family that Marvel Heroes Omega will be shutting down. The Marvel Heroes servers will stay on until December 31st, 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.”

However, recent news suggests that the game will be shutting off much sooner than its announced date. A report on PCGamesN addressed information from a source inside Gazillion, sharing that the majority of Gazillion’s workforce was being terminated immediately. Those sources have been confirmed by now ex-Gazillion employees on Twitter, a few of which you can read below:

Officially unemployed on the day before thanksgiving.

Nice.

— Brian Waggoner (@Asros) November 22, 2017

“Happy Holidays, the company is dead and you’re laid off.” https://t.co/UGJt75ftL4 — Andrew Hair (@andrewhair) November 22, 2017

I know a lot of people are upset and wanting refunds for their purchases in @MarvelHeroes, but please keep in mind the developers were not paid out PTO, severance, and our medical insurance is ending in 8 days. — Andrew Hair (@andrewhair) November 22, 2017

A sincere apology to all @MarvelHeroes fans as the game shuts down prematurely. I know you wanted Gaz to be more transparent about recent events – we would have liked to as well. It was a pleasure working on the game and interacting with all of you on the forums. -GazFirefly — Peter Pascoal (@fireflypdp) November 23, 2017

Gazillion’s former employees have been caught by surprise as they had expected to still have work and benefits for the rest of 2017. Marvel Heroes first launched in 2013 for PC, getting new iterations in 2015 and 2016 and finally its current version, Marvel Heroes Omega. As of right now, Marvel Heroes Omega is still online, presumably in its ‘sunset period’ until the end of December.