Though it’s never been outright stated or confirmed in anyway officially, the urban legend is that Disney/Marvel has such sour grapes over Fox owning the film rights to some of their properties, namely the X-Men and Fantastic Four, that they’re purposefully not promoting them in other ways in which they own the rights to like video games, even comics. There’s been a big push from Marvel for the Inhumans over the past few years for example as if they’re trying to position them as a replacement for the mutant characters in the Marvel Universe because they own the movie rights to that franchise, and there hasn’t been a Fantastic Four comic series for a few years now. It looked like however that Disney/Marvel was loosening the reins a little: There’s been a lot of X-Men comics relaunched over the last couple of months, X-Men characters were added to the mobile game Marvel Future Fight, an Invisible Woman Marvel Legends figure was recently released and a new series featuring half of the Fantastic Four, the Human Torch and the Thing, titled Marvel Two-in-One is coming during the Marvel Legacy relaunch.

If there’s one thing that’s going to reignite the Marvel is trying to sleight Fox theory, it will be the recent announcement from Gazillion Entertainment, the developer of the Marvel Heroes MMO. Characters from the Fantastic Four, save Doctor Doom who’s the main villain in the game’s campaign, and costumes related to the group like a Future Foundation Spider-Man, have been part of the game since the start, but as of July 1st this year, you’ll no longer be able to obtain anything in-game related to the Fantastic Four. From an official forum post from Gazillion Entertainment yesterday:

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

Players who already own characters and content related to Marvel’s First Family as sated will be able to continue to use them and updates and balance tweaks are also promised to still be coming, even after the characters and costumes are removed from the game’s store. The list of things being removed from the game starting Saturday is as follows:

VIA KOTAKU