Fantastic Four characters will no longer be sold for Marvel Heroes soon. According to the developers of the game, they no longer have the rights.

Gazillion, the company behind the popular Marvel Comics action RPG / MMO, stated in their latest blog post that come July 1st, 2017, players will no longer be able to purchase Fantastic Four characters. This includes Mr. Fantastic, The Thing, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and Silver Surfer.

"Under Gazillion’s renewed licensing agreement we do not have the rights to continue selling these characters moving forward," the blog notes. "However, players who have already purchased or unlocked any of these affected characters and costumes before July 1 will be able to continue playing them as usual."

Several character costumes will also be affected once the aforementioned date rolls around. Gazillion notes that they will continue to support these heroes with the same tuning, bug fixing, and attention they give to the others on the roster.

So, why are we talking about this on a fighting game news site? Obviously, this raises the already strong concern for potential X-Men and Fantastic Four characters in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite.

At this time, characters from either franchise have not been revealed as playable in the upcoming crossover fighter. Many of the characters from these IPs are not only fan-favorites, but are staples of the versus series that stem all the way back to its roots.

Long-time fans of Marvel vs. Capcom and the community as a whole has been clamoring about the possible omission since the game's initial reveal back in December 2016, and as it stands right now, things aren't looking too good. With a game like Marvel Heroes losing the rights to use Fantastic Four characters, could we be seeing Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite suffer the same fate?

"Your modern Marvel fan, maybe they don't even remember some of the X-Men characters, but they know some of the Guardians characters or Black Panther. You know what I mean?"

— Capcom's Mike Evans.

In a recent interview with GameSpot, Capcom's Mike Evans and Peter "Combofiend" Rosas touched upon the potential inclusion (or lack thereof) of X-Men characters in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. Though the company can't address it head on right now and maintains that anything is possible, the current climate seems to be pointing to no X-Men or Fantastic Four for the game's launch roster.

"Then also we talked with Marvel very closely about their future roadmap, about what's gonna be happening," Evans told GameSpot. "Your modern Marvel fan, maybe they don't even remember some of the X-Men characters, but they know some of the Guardians characters or Black Panther. You know what I mean?"

In the same interview, Rosas explained that players mostly associate these highly requested characters with their functions. "Magneto, case and point, is a favorite because he has eight-way dash and he's really fast, right? So our more technical players, all they want to do is triangle jump and that kind of stuff," Rosas said.

"Well guess what, Nova can do the same thing, Captain Marvel can do the same thing. Ultron can do the same thing. Go ahead and try them out. It's just the function that people are associating with the character, and there's no shortage of that," he concluded.

Despite the fact that these statements seem to be an attempt to sweep X-Men and Fantastic Four characters under the rug, Capcom did previously state that their character choices for MvCI are not restricted by the IP rights for Marvel's Cinematic Universe.

Speaking to Metro last month, Mike Evans addressed the claims that X-Men and Fantastic Four characters will be excluded due to 20th Century Fox holding the cinematic rights for these franchises. If the restrictions were in place due to legalities, it would be understandable.

"Totally, totally. No, but it’s not," Evans said. "And if Marvel were here they would answer as I’m going to. It’s not based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We take a lot of inspiration from the cinematic universe, but the game is a completely original universe."

As it stands right now, things are still up in the air. Though it is entirely possible we won't see these characters at launch, the future could potentially be bright for them.

Rumors have suggested that we'll be seeing a launch roster sans characters from these two franchises. However, they also claim that future DLC will be centered around X-Men and Fantastic Four, so we'll have to wait and see what happens.

It is also worth mentioning that Marvel Heroes does have X-Men characters in-game, and based on their official forums they appear to be remaining on the roster for the time being. So, this could be a glimmer of hope for Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, but only time will tell.

Via Comic Book. Sent in by Timberfellingrobot.