EA has reportedly cancelled its single-player Black Panther game and closed the studio behind it, resulting in an unspecified number of layoffs.
EA Entertainment president Laura Miele shared the news in an email to staff seen by IGN, insisting today’s Black Panther cancellation, the closure of Cliffhanger Games, and the resulting job losses – as well the recent cancellation of other projects, including an unannounced Titanfall game at Respawn – would help the publisher “sharpen our focus and put our creative energy behind the most significant growth opportunities.”
EA declined to comment on the number of employees impacted by this latest round of layoffs (which will also affect members of its mobile and central divisions) when approached by IGN, but the publication says it understands fewer individuals will be affected compared to the 300 job cuts recently made across Respawn Entertainment and several other teams.
“These decisions are hard,” Miele wrote in her email to staff. “They affect people we’ve worked with, learned from, and shared real moments with. We’re doing everything we can to support them — including finding opportunities within EA, where we’ve had success helping people land in new roles.”
EA has officially announced its Black Panther game back in 2023, confirming it would be handled by its then-new Seattle-based Cliffhanger Games studio in collaboration with Marvel Games. At the time, it was confirmed to be a third-person game set in an “expansive and reactive” version of Wakanda, that was still “early in development”. Nothing has been seen of the project since then, although a job listing the following year indicated it would be an open-world game.
Black Panther’s cancellation follows EA CEO Andrew Wilson’s comments last year that the publisher would be moving away from “future licensed IP”. And while Miele insisted EA will continue invest in EA Motive’s Iron Man and Respawn’s third Star Wars: Jedi game, she suggested the focus will now be on a small number of its own franchises, specifically Battlefield, The Sims, Skate, and Apex Legends. That’s in addition to Bioware’s next Mass Effect. Notably, EA also recently announced it was ending its partnership with the World Rally Championship and “pausing development” on all future rally games, a move which resulting in an undisclosed number of additional layoffs at Codemasters.