Between Apex Legends, the Star Wars: Jedi series, and other projects, Respawn Entertainment has a lot on its plate, so it’s a little shocking to hear that EA is laying off even more members of the studio this year. It raises ongoing questions about what’s going on inside the team that’s seemingly working on everything but Titanfall 3.
Respawn announced on Tuesday that it had recently stepped away from two unannounced incubation projects. The statement mentioned “difficult changes,” “targeted team adjustments,” and providing “meaningful support to those impacted,” but didn’t explicitly say there were layoffs or how many were affected. “Wait idk what this means,” one person responded on X.
To know what was actually going on, you’d have had to read a new report by IGN that was posted at the exact same moment. The fresh layoffs, which reportedly follow on the back of an earlier round in March, included “a mix of developers, publishing, and QA workers on Apex Legends, as well as smaller groups of individuals on the Jedi team and on the incubation projects.” IGN reports that up to 100 employees could be fired as part of todays changes.
At least one of the cancelled incubation projects was reportedly a multiplayer first-person shooter, though little is known beyond that. Rumors of a new Titanfall game spring eternal, but had been circulating with greater intensity than usual lately as dueling leakers argued over whether any Titanfall-related projects remained active within Respawn and how close to seeing the light of day they were. It certainly doesn’t sound like there is anyone at the studio with the bandwidth to even be dreaming of a new entry in the sci-fi military mech franchise at this point. Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb says a new project from Titanfall 2 game director Steve Fukuda was one of the things cancelled.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson recently promised shareholders that Apex Legends, following a year of player burnout and downward trends, would get something of a “2.0″ update in the future, suggesting a significant evolution of the battle royale is still in the pipeline. Respawn is also busy with the next Star Wars: Jedi game and is helping Bit Reactor with its recently revealed XCOM-style Star Wars game called Zero Company. IGN reports that some developers previously at the studio were also moved to help EA Motive with its Iron Man game.
Respawn seems like the last place a publisher that prints money through FIFA and Madden loot boxes would look to cut, but the latest restructuring at Respawn comes after EA reported poorer-than-expected financial results last quarter due in part to Dragon Age: The Veilguard failing to meet the company’s sales expectations. The publisher thus also recently scaled back BioWare, which is now solely focused on the next Mass Effect.
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