Things aren’t looking great inside Respawn Entertainment right now. After Electronic Arts shut down Cliffhanger Games and canned the Black Panther single-player project this week, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor’s senior encounter designer Patrick Wren shared what a lot of fans suspected, the vibe at Respawn is rough.
“Morale has been at an all-time low. I can say that much,” Wren said in a new social media post following the news.
It’s not hard to see why. In just two years, EA has reportedly axed three Respawn-led projects and each one hit a little harder than the last. First, there was the rumored Titanfall/Apex Legends crossover, which was quietly trashed in 2023.
Then came the Star Wars FPS, which was allegedly a Mandalorian game, that got pulled from hyperspace before fans even got a look. Most recently, in March, another unannounced shooter joined EA’s ever-growing graveyard of discarded concepts.
Now with Cliffhanger Games shut down and the Black Panther game gone before it could even find its footing, it’s clear that the publisher is aggressively tightening the leash on single-player development, despite consistently strong interest from fans.
Respawn, best known for the Titanfall series, Apex Legends, and the Star Wars Jedi games, isn’t folding just yet. Work is still moving forward on a third Jedi installment, something actor Cameron Monaghan (Cal Kestis) teased as being “really cool.”
There’s also Star Wars: Zero Company, a new project being developed alongside ex-XCOM devs, and murmurs of an Apex Legends 2.0 slowly coming together.
But for those of us who still remember the awesomeness of Titanfall 2, a game that many argue deserved far better, this news cycle hits differently. Respawn helped redefine single-player shooters. Watching their creative momentum get repeatedly undercut by corporate decisions? It’s discouraging.
If morale is at an all-time low over there, fans are definitly feeling it too.
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