EA Cancels Black Panther Game, Closes Cliffhanger Games
(Thursday May 29, 2025 @03:00AM (BeauHD)
from the game-over dept.)
- Reference: 0177839343
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/05/28/2226236/ea-cancels-black-panther-game-closes-cliffhanger-games
- Source link:
Electronic Arts has [1]canceled its in-development Black Panther game and shut down Cliffhanger Games , marking its third round of layoffs this year. IGN reports:
> In an email sent to staff from EA Entertainment president Laura Miele, Miele said that these changes, alongside other recent cancellations and layoffs, are being done to "sharpen our focus and put our creative energy behind the most significant growth opportunities." In addition to closing Cliffhanger and canceling Black Panther, EA is also laying off some individuals on both its mobile and central teams. [...] As with past rounds of layoffs, EA is endeavoring to place affected individuals in other roles across the company. [...]
>
> To that end, Miele's email continues, the company is focusing on a small handful of franchises going forward: Battlefield, The Sims, Skate, and Apex Legends. Miele also reassures EA will continue to invest in its Iron Man game at Motive and the third Star Wars: Jedi game, as well as it maintain its mobile business despite today's cuts, while Bioware works on the next Mass Effect. Additionally, last year, CEO Andrew Wilson [2]announced the company would be "moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry." The email doesn't mention EA Sports, but this is due to Miele running EA Entertainment, while EA Sports is a separate division. IGN understands that the sports division is unaffected by these changes for now.
>
> Notably, Marvel and EA's agreement for Black Panther was part of a three-game deal that included Iron Man and a third, unannounced title. IGN understands this partnership will continue, with Motive Studios leading future Marvel titles. EA provided the following statement regarding the deal with Marvel to IGN, attributed to Miele: "Our partnership with Marvel remains strong and our multi-title, long-term collaboration continues."
[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/ea-cancels-black-panther-game-closes-cliffhanger-games
[2] https://www.ea.com/news/continuing-to-evolve-our-business-and-teams
> In an email sent to staff from EA Entertainment president Laura Miele, Miele said that these changes, alongside other recent cancellations and layoffs, are being done to "sharpen our focus and put our creative energy behind the most significant growth opportunities." In addition to closing Cliffhanger and canceling Black Panther, EA is also laying off some individuals on both its mobile and central teams. [...] As with past rounds of layoffs, EA is endeavoring to place affected individuals in other roles across the company. [...]
>
> To that end, Miele's email continues, the company is focusing on a small handful of franchises going forward: Battlefield, The Sims, Skate, and Apex Legends. Miele also reassures EA will continue to invest in its Iron Man game at Motive and the third Star Wars: Jedi game, as well as it maintain its mobile business despite today's cuts, while Bioware works on the next Mass Effect. Additionally, last year, CEO Andrew Wilson [2]announced the company would be "moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry." The email doesn't mention EA Sports, but this is due to Miele running EA Entertainment, while EA Sports is a separate division. IGN understands that the sports division is unaffected by these changes for now.
>
> Notably, Marvel and EA's agreement for Black Panther was part of a three-game deal that included Iron Man and a third, unannounced title. IGN understands this partnership will continue, with Motive Studios leading future Marvel titles. EA provided the following statement regarding the deal with Marvel to IGN, attributed to Miele: "Our partnership with Marvel remains strong and our multi-title, long-term collaboration continues."
[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/ea-cancels-black-panther-game-closes-cliffhanger-games
[2] https://www.ea.com/news/continuing-to-evolve-our-business-and-teams
probably had to (Score:1, Insightful)
by Anonymous Coward
With the Trump administration going after anything smacking of DEI, they may not have had much choice but the cancel the Black Panther game.
Re: (Score:2)
by Calydor ( 739835 )
Blood Red Panther, then.
So besides the licenses (Score:3)
by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
That they locked down to prevent competitors from getting a hold of them they're basically killing everything that doesn't bleed microtransactions. I guess there is skate but I fully expect to see that either canceled or cut back so severely it probably should have been canceled...
/o\ | \o/ (Score:1)
by easyTree ( 1042254 )
Nightmares from the past:
"EA - it's (not) in the gayyyyyme"
Can't remember last time bought EA game... (Score:2)
by bsdetector101 ( 6345122 )
Can't remember last time bought EA game...maybe 30 years ago !
Open source it (Score:3)
It's immoral to let all that work go to waste. Just put it in the public domain or at least make it licensable to others, someone else could probably use the 3D models, textures, and things like that. They don't have to open source all of it to the point where a competitor could finish the game and make a ton of money. They could make the key parts of it licensable.
Re: (Score:2)
Why would anyone selling products that compete for specific fixed pool of consumer entertainment budget provide any competitor with cheap access to results of their investments so that competitor could compete with them for that same limited pool of consumer entertainment budget?
This makes anti-sense.
Re:Open source it (Score:4, Interesting)
Zero sum thinking will doom the world. Same mentality persists in extinctionists, communists, and people who think there are too many humans. The more great games get made, the more people will play and buy video games. There isn't a fixed sum of anything in the world. You don't have to make someone else sad to be happy.
Re: (Score:2)
Very insightful. Very few things are truly a zero-sum game in life,
that attitude completely discounts any win-win situations stupidly, selfishly and needlessly.
Yet, the firings and beatings will continue until morale improves!
Re: (Score:3)
Wishful thinking doesn't change the fact that entertainment budgets are limited and everyone who competes for a chunk of it takes it from other competitors.
Re: (Score:1)
They're targeting children and stoners - both of whom have limited discretionary income.
Re: (Score:3)
From a purely practical standpoint, codebases like this (I have 20+ years in the console games industry as a programmer) contain source code, headers, and other proprietary stuff from other vendors (to say nothing about the console SDKs) we're not allowed to just release. Finding it all, ripping it out, and being confident it's been done properly from a legal perspective is expensive, cumbersome, and risky.
Watch the opening screen of a modern AA to AAAA videogame these days. It's littered with 3rd party sof
Re: Open source it (Score:3)
There is no confirmed information about what engine this cancelled game used but it's a good bet that it was either Frostbite or Unreal Engine, neither of which EA can legally open source.
Re: (Score:2)
canceled doesn't mean destroyed. the ip, licenses and assets still have financial value for the owning company. if anything in their accounting books, but they may be relicensed, sold or even reused at some point in the future (less likely). until it has been left to rot for over a decade hardly any game company will just give that away, much less a toxic dumpster like ea (which is why i have not touched an ea game for around two decades; good riddance).