Gazillion Announces Removal Of Fantastic 4, Silver Surfer From Marvel Heroes -- Then Removes Post

Yesterday, a post was made on the Marvel Heroes forums announcing that after July 1, no players would be able to purchase certain Fantastic 4 characters: Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Thing, and Human Torch as well as Silver Surfer. The post also listed a selection of items related to these characters that would no longer be available for player purchase.

Since then, the post has been removed, but this being the internet and all, one of the players saved a snapshot of it and posted it on Reddit. Why the post is down is still unknown, but when it was still up it made it pretty clear that for some reason these characters -- which are all characters licensed to FOX for movie making purposes -- were no longer allowed under Gazillion's license with Marvel.

Fan speculation is that this is just another bit of fallout from Marvel's recent moves to make the characters less popular in order to encourage FOX to turn the property back over to them. Previous actions have included cutting them out of comics. Either way, it sucks for fans of the series.

That said, it will be interesting to find out why the post was removed so quickly. One could hope that it was premature and some additional negotiations are being done. However, the post DID point out that players who had already purchased these heroes could still continue to use them. Whether that will end up remaining the case though is anyone's guess at the moment.