For the third time this year alone, employees have been laid off from Electronic Arts. The company has completely shuttered Cliffhanger Games and has also canceled the Black Panther game that was in development.
IGN was able to obtain a copy of the email that was sent to Electronic Arts' employees from EA Entertainment president Laura Miele. Miele's email says that these layoffs, along with other recent cancellations, closures, and layoffs, are done in order to "sharpen our focus on put our creative energy behind the most significant growth opportunities."
These decisions are hard. 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.
Miele mentions in her email that EA is focusing on a smaller number of franchises moving forward. Those franchises include: Battlefield, The Sims, Skate, and Apex Legends. The Iron Man game in development at Motiv is still being worked on, as is the third Star Wars: Jedi game at Respawn. The mobile business will continue even with the layoffs issued today. BioWare is still also continuing to work on the next Mass Effect title.
The now-cancelled Black Panther game was announced in 2023. Very little was known about the game other than it was set to be a single player, action-adventure game set in an open world environment. The game was going to be the first title from the now shuttered Cliffhanger Games, which was formed at the same time as the game's announcement. Cliffhanger Games was led by Kevin Stephens from Monolith Productions with a team that was made up of many industry veterans that worked on Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor.
Near the start of the year, Electronic Arts laid off an undisclosed number of employees from BioWare. In 2024, EA cut around 670 jobs and closed Ridgeline Games.
