American publisher Electronic Arts has carried out another wave of layoffs at Respawn Entertainment, a studio known for the Titanfall series, the battle royale Apex Legends, and the Jedi action duology Star Wars Jedi.
Image source: Electronic Arts
As a result of a “stronger focus on the future,” Respawn said the studio has pulled two games that were in incubation and made “targeted adjustments” to the Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi teams.
According to IGN, we are talking about about 100 specialists from the publishing department, development teams and quality control. At least some of the employees were transferred to the Iron Man game from the Motive studio.
The Iron Man game was announced in the fall of 2022 and not a single frame from the project has been shown yet
As Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier reports, one of the cancelled projects was a game codenamed R7, an evacuation shooter set in the Titanfall universe (that one). The action movie was nowhere near release.
Respawn’s new general manager is its senior vice president of operations, Daniel Suarez, who will report to the studio’s founder, Vince Zampella.
Full text of Respawn’s statement
Respawn will therefore continue working on Apex Legends, the final chapter of Star Wars Jedi, and Bit Reactor’s strategy game Star Wars Zero Company. EA declined to say whether the studio has any other projects in the incubation stage.
It was previously reported that within the walls of Respawn, a small team led by Titanfall duology director Steve Fukuda is working on a project that potentially includes titans.