canned

Image: Marvel Comics

The team behind EA’s Black Panther game was working on a vertical slice before it was killed this week. That’s according to a new report by Bloomberg that sheds some light on what the canceled project was shaping up to be, including its story based around the alien Skrull and the evolution of Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor’s acclaimed nemesis system.

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Bloomberg reports that developers at Cliffhanger Games were caught off-guard by the sudden cancellation of the game and closure of the studio. Given just 30 minutes’ notice before the news was announced by EA in an internal meeting, the studio had apparently just recently successfully passed one of its development milestones and was working toward a vertical slice that would show a chunk of the game in action.

The story reportedly revolved around playing as T’Challa, Killmonger, or Shuri as each vied for the mantle of Black Panther which would grant them superhuman powers. The game would also feature fights with the shapeshifting Skrull showcased in Marvel’s popular Secret Invasion comic-book crossover event. The gameplay was also aiming to incorporate elements of the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor such that enemies might remember past encounters with the player and relationships with aspiring Black Panther rivals might evolve.

It appears the most likely reason EA may have decided to walk away from the project was the lack of progress after several years of prototyping, even as some of those laid off in Cliffhanger Games’ closure had only just arrived at the studio earlier this year as it scaled up its development capabilities. Several developers spoke up about the project online this week following its cancelation.

“Well, it was a good run while it lasted,” posted software engineer Ted Snook. “Found out today that Cliffhanger Games is shut down by EA. We had a great team, and the project was starting to get some momentum. This industry is just so brutal.” Narrative designer Ricky Llamas added, “What stands out to me about this studio is how open folks are to having frank conversations and working through our problems together. It helps create a healthy dynamic that’s rare to see.”

EA’s latest cancellation comes amid a recent wave of hundreds of layoffs and as the publisher “narrows its focus” on its biggest franchises like The Sims, Battlefield, and Apex Legends. At the same time, the company claimed its three-game deal with Disney remains in effect, and it still plans to eventually ship two more after EA Motive’s Iron Man comes out in the years ahead.

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EA’s decided to go back to the cutting well. Its execs have decided to cancel a Black Panther game that was in the works at Cliffhanger Games, and close the studio for good measure. An unspecified number of people will lose their jons or have to transition to other roles within EA as a result.

This is according to a report from IGN, which cites an email from EA Entertainment president Laura Miele about these latest cuts as having said that they’re part of the publisher’s ongoing efforts to “sharpen our focus” and go hard on “the most significant growth opportunities”. Yep, it’s 2025, and a liscenced Marvel tie-in revolving around a popular movie franchise apparently isn’t a good opportunity to make money.

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EA hasn’t confirmed the number of staff affected by Cliffhanger’s closure and some layoffs to its mobile and central teams it’s enacting at the same time, with IGN understanding that less people will be hit than the roughly 300 impacted by the layoffs the publisher enacted just last month.

That last round, in case you’ve lost track of EA’s wanton self-destruction by this point, involved staff at respawn and came with the news that an in-development Titanfall game had been consigned to the scrapheap.

“These decisions are hard,” Miele wrote in the email, “They affect people we’ve worked with, learned from, and shared real moments with. We’re doing everything we can to support them — including finding opportunities within EA, where we’ve had success helping people land in new roles.”

We’d not seen anything of this Black Panther game from Cliffhanger following its announcement back in 2023. That announcement revealed that it’d be a third-person, single-player thing featuring “an expansive and reactive world that empowers players to experience what it is like to take on the mantle of Wakanda’s protector, the Black Panther”. In 2024, a job listing hinted that world could be an open one.

So, it’s impossible to say if it’d have been a good, bad, or just decent game had it gone the distance. But, like, what are we doing here if even games like this don’t get the chance to make it to an end result? Miele said that EA plans to continue to put cash into Motive’s Iron Man game and the next Star Wars: Jedi game from Respawn.

Aside from that though, the publisher’s continued move away from liscenced titles looks to be seeing it pretty much circle the wagons around Battlefield, The Sims, Skate, Apex Legends, and the Mass Effect game what’s left of BioWare is now working on.

After all, why bother giving yourself lots of chances to make money, when you can put all of your eggs into an increasingly dwindling basket and desperately pray that nothing ever goes wrong with any of them?

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Canned Black Panther Game Featured Nemesis System And Skrull

Black Panther game reportedly canned as EA closes Cliffhanger Games, resulting in an unspecified amount of layoffs and role switches