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In a sudden announcement just before the release of Apex Legends Season 25, EA confirmed that they’ve cancelled 2 other games they’re working on and have cut staff on their Apex and Star Wars teams.
Apex Legends is one of EA’s most successful games both financially and in terms of player count. Even with interest waning over the past few years as people move on to other competitive multiplayer titles, it still has one of the largest concurrent player counts on Steam and regularly passes other big titles like Marvel Rivals.
The Star Wars Jedi series is no slouch, either, with both games being some of the highest rated Star Wars media outside of the original films.
Despite this success, however, EA has made the decision to cut Respawn down and make staffing cuts. And two projects the public didn’t even know about yet have been cancelled as a result.
Respawn lays off employees & cancels 2 games
Considering the general strength of the Titanfall IP and how well Apex Legends has capitalized on that universe to create a truly unique battle royale, longtime fans of the franchise have been surprised by the series never getting a third entry.
And, while Respawn’s announcement doesn’t exactly mean that Titanfall 3 has been cancelled, it doesn’t bode well for the future of any Respawn games outside of Apex and next Star Wars Jedi title.
“We’ve made the decision to step away from two early-stage incubation projects and make some targeted team adjustments across Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi,” Respawn said in a press release.
An “incubation project” is a common term in game development to refer to a title in pre-production with a small team. That team tries to create a strong enough pitch deck for the title to warrant full funding for that new game. So, in other words, these projects weren’t full games just yet, although it’s unclear how far into development they were.
The rest of the release explained how they’re looking to improve on both Apex and Star Wars Jedi in vague terms, not giving much detail on how they plan to do so. According to a report from IGN, 100 staff members at Respawn were laid off as part of over 300 positions being terminated at EA.
There is, however, a statement from former employee Ben Gosselin who said the project he was moved to was something he “thought was stable for a few years” before he and his entire team got cut.
Industry insider Jeff Grubb claims that Titanfall 3 is dead.
“I don’t think people realize just how much EA Football Club and Apex Legends missed last year. Dragon Age isn’t even a factor compared to those two,” he said.
This does contradict other leaks claiming that Titanfall 3 is nearly complete, with the game having a full campaign and multiplayer battle pass structure, so it remains to be seen whether or not that was one of the games on the chopping block here.
And, while Apex Legends Season 25 is right around the corner, the next Star Wars Jedi game in the trilogy hasn’t been revealed yet, nor does it have any sort of release window at the time of writing.
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