Almost two years ago, at the time of writing, EA and Cliffhanger Games confirmed that the rumors of a new Black Panther game coming from EA were true, and that the team at Cliffhanger was working on a new single-player, third-person action game with Black Panther as the main character.
Today, a new report from IGN revealed that EA has canceled its Black Panther game and shut down the studio working on it, Cliffhanger Games. It’s the latest batch of layoffs from Electronic Arts after the company laid off 300-400 developers last month and canceled an incubation project at Respawn. It also recently announced that it would be sunsetting its remote work policies and moving to push employees back to working in the office.
According to the report, the layoffs extend to members of EA’s mobile and central teams, but the company would not share exactly how many developers were impacted. In an email from Laura Miele, EA Entertainment president, she reportedly called the decision, and the other recent layoffs that EA has suffered, “hard” choices, but that they are choices being made to “sharpen our focus and put our creative energy behind the most significant growth opportunities.“
Miele also wrote that the company is doing “everything we can to support them, including finding opportunities within EA, where we’ve had success helping people land in new roles.” She also continues to say that moving forward, EA’s Entertainment division will focus on: The Sims, Skate, Battlefield, and Apex Legends.
Respawn will still work on the upcoming third installment in the Star Wars Jedi series, and the Iron Man game from Motive Studio is still happening, though with this cancellation, it’s worth not putting too much stock in Miele’s reassurances about the Iron Man game, especially when considering what EA’s chief executive officer, Andrew Wilson, said last year about EA moving away from games based on licensed IP.
