The news has been bad all the way down when it comes to the video game industry lately. Thousands of workers across Sony, Microsoft and countless other publishers and studios have been laid off over the past year. Another 670 will lose their job at Electronic Arts.
“With it being an extremely difficult time to obtain funding to start a new game studio, and thousands being laid off by the month, video games run a significant risk of losing top talent outside of the industry and being impacted for years,” Rich Barham, a former Blizzard executive, told the BBC.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson, in a note to staff, said that the company would be “moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry.”
In a separate email, EA entertainment head Laura Miele said that this wave of layoffs also meant the cancellation of an upcoming Star Wars first-person shooter in development from Respawn Games. All of this is tragic—and of course, the job losses are terrible—but I want to just point out what a really enormous hit this is for fans of both Star Wars and the FPS genre.
Respawn not only made the very capable battle royale title Apex Legends, but the masterpiece first-person shooter Titanfall 2, one of the best FPS titles I’ve ever played. On top of that, both Jedi games the studio has released have been surprisingly great (if a little buggy!) and the idea of combining that level of Star Wars with the first-person shooting of Titanfall 2 / Apex Legends is just awesome to imagine.
And it would almost certainly make a ton of money. The decision to cancel is a truly baffling one. EA doubling down on games like Battlefield only makes sense if that series can ever find its footing again. Not pursuing future third-party IP might make business sense, but abandoning a project that would so obviously be a huge hit is perplexing and disappointing to say the least.
I suppose the consolation prize is you can play the remastered Star Wars: Dark Forces FPS now, which just launched on Steam and consoles. It’s an oldie but a goodie. I was thinking about writing up all the Star Wars games that have been cancelled over the past few years but I don’t want to get even more depressed than I already am. A lot. It’s been a lot. And that’s a shame.