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Marvel Heroes developer Gazillion loses CEO David Brevik [Update]

The Marvel Heroes universe just got rocked this morning, as Gazillion has announced that CEO David Brevik has resigned from his position. (Update: Brevik has issued a formal goodbye post, announcing his future plans.)

Ozzie Mejia

January 8, 2016 9:10 AM

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Throughout the entire development of Marvel Heroes, one of the constants over at Gazillion has been former Blizzard North co-founder David Brevik. Brevik has been the face of the company and one of the champions for the Marvel Universe-based MMORPG. However, it now appears that Brevik has decided to exit the company.

VentureBeat issued the report of Brevik's sudden departure earlier this morning. Dave Dohrmann will act as new CEO and states that Brevik's departure was amicable.

"After six years with the company, David Brevik has moved on from CEO of Gazillion to other opportunities," reads the Gazillion statement. "David has played an integral role in the growth and success of Gazillion, most notably leading the development of the acclaimed Marvel Heroes 2015 – and we greatly appreciate his many contributions to the game and the community."

Brevik also released a statement to VentureBeat, stating, "Creating Marvel Heroes has been a work of passion for over six years. It was my first opportunity to work on a live-service product and interact with our amazing community and it has been one of the best experiences of my life. I’m very proud of all the work our talented team has done together. Though the time has come for me to move on, I’m excited about the future of Marvel Heroes and look forward to what’s next from studio director Jeff Lind and the team."

The timing comes on the heels of the next big Marvel Heroes update, as it is set to deploy its big Marvel Heroes 2016 update later this month.

Update: Brevik's formal goodbye to the Marvel Heroes community has been posted on the game's forums and revealed that he plans to go into indie game development.

"Almost 7 years ago, I joined Gazillion as the Creative Director for a new Marvel product. I still can’t believe that this dream came true. I have been a life-long Marvel fan and I really relished the opportunity to create a unique and fun Marvel game.

Over the course of the next year, my job really changed. I went from Creative Director to the head of all Gazillion studios (there were many locations back in those days). Slightly after that, I was promoted to President and COO of the company and I became more and more distant from the project that brought me to Gazillion. About six months before Marvel Heroes launched, I became CEO, which is the position I have held for about three years now.

As CEO, I spent most of my time running the company. I played the game a lot, talked about the game a lot and added lots of feedback and new ideas, but that is a very different job than being a Creative Director. After doing this for several years, I really want to get back to developing games and programming. I got into this industry to make games and I miss the day-to-day creation process.

That said, it was difficult, because I love Marvel Heroes. I love our community. I love the team I helped assemble. We have an incredibly talented staff here and I know that the game is in great hands. I believe in the future of the game and I know a lot of the amazing things that are being worked on. The game has some really cool features coming that I know I will enjoy. Yes, I will still be playing the game. Yes, I will still be streaming. I will still be sending the team feedback and information and suggestions. I may not work at Gazillion, but I love this game. I’m very proud of what we accomplished.

As for what’s next, I am going to go indie. I’m going back to doing the things I love most: programming and making games. We will have more information about that in the future.

Thank you team, community and family for a wonderful seven years together. I am so lucky to be a part of such an incredible experience.

Best,
David"

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?