EA’s determined to return to the slicing properly. Its execs have determined to cancel a Black Panther recreation that was within the works at Cliffhanger Video games, and shut the studio for good measure. An unspecified variety of individuals will lose their jons or need to transition to different roles inside EA because of this.
That is in keeping with a report from IGN, which cites an e mail from EA Leisure president Laura Miele about these cyclone cuts as having stated that they are a part of the writer’s ongoing efforts to “sharpen our focus” and go exhausting on “essentially the most vital progress alternatives”. Yep, it is 2025, and a liscenced Marvel tie-in revolving round a preferred film franchise apparently is not a very good alternative to generate profits.
EA hasn’t confirmed the variety of workers affected by Cliffhanger’s closure and a few layoffs to its cell and central groups it is enacting on the identical time, with IGN understanding that much less individuals shall be hit than the roughly 300 impacted by the layoffs the writer enacted just last month.
That final spherical, in case you have misplaced monitor of EA’s wanton self-destruction by this level, concerned workers at respawn and got here with the information that an in-development Titanfall recreation had been consigned to the scrapheap.
“These choices are exhausting,” Miele wrote within the e mail, “They have an effect on individuals we’ve labored with, discovered from, and shared actual moments with. We’re doing every thing we are able to to assist them — together with discovering alternatives inside EA, the place we’ve had success serving to individuals land in new roles.”
We might not seen something of this Black Panther recreation from Cliffhanger following its announcement back in 2023. That announcement revealed that it would be a third-person, single-player factor that includes “an expansive and reactive world that empowers gamers to expertise what it’s prefer to tackle the mantle of Wakanda’s protector, the Black Panther”. In 2024, a job listing hinted that world could possibly be an open one.
So, it is not possible to say if it’d have been a very good, unhealthy, or simply respectable recreation had it gone the space. However, like, what are we doing right here if even video games like this do not get the prospect to make it to an finish outcome? Miele stated that EA plans to proceed to place money into Motive’s Iron Man recreation and the subsequent Star Wars: Jedi recreation from Respawn.
Apart from that although, the writer’s continued move away from liscenced titles appears to be seeing it just about circle the wagons round Battlefield, The Sims, Skate, Apex Legends, and the Mass Impact recreation what’s left of BioWare is now engaged on.
In any case, why hassle giving your self numerous possibilities to generate profits, when you’ll be able to put your whole eggs into an more and more dwindling basket and desperately pray that nothing ever goes fallacious with any of them?