EA's Black Panther Game Cancelled, Studio Shut Down

You could say the story will be left on a cliff hanger...

That certainly sucks for the people working on it, but man... comic book games seem to really be hit or miss these days. It's wild to me these massive franchises can rarely put together a game worth bringing to market, let alone playing.

A Black Panther game by way of those ME games would be awesome.

Here's a wild thought: cancel the game and don't lay everyone off. Let them make a new game... Crazy, I know.

@MFTWrecks apart from Suicide Squad and Avengers, comic book games have been solid in the last few years, Spiderman series, Midnight Suns, Rivals, Arkham series, GotG

Gutted about this black panther is one of my favourite characters and I hope everyone who lost there jobs land on there feet

Same thing happened with Wonder Woman. Their first movies did amazing, games get greenlit because of the hype, sequels disappoint, hype dies, and then game dies. BP2 was good but Boseman was the life of Black Panther and he passed away. RIP

Sucks! A single player, open world Black Panther game actually sounds promising. Don’t care about Skate, Apex, Sims, and Mass Effect is a shell of itself now. Maybe the Iron Man game finds its way out. Anyways, best wishes to all who are laid off.

This is a bummer. I was genuinely looking forward to this because I think the premise of Black Panther is interesting, and I can imagine how fun the combat could be.

Grandparents gonna be telling grandkids in the future of what caused the riots of May 2025

Ah EA First you Say No To a Dead Space 2 Remake and now this pretty soon they are going to start saying no to future Dragon Age and possibly Mass Effect games in the Future.

Shame. T’Challa has been absolutely buried and it’s frustrating. I get what they were going for with Wakanda Forever even if it sorta bored me to tears but ultimately the momentum of the first Black Panther was left to die with Boseman rather than continuing the positive legacy he left behind. With this (yet to be cancelled) WW2 game having T’Challa’s grandad as well, he really isn’t having the best of luck as a character.

Is this the game with Captain America that was shown off a year or two ago?

@pyrrhic_victory

That's Marvel 1943

@wildcat_kickz The time it would take for the studio come up with another idea, pitch it, and get all the tools in place to start development of another game... They would have completed the Black Panther game or be ready to at least release it. There no reason to try and keep the studio around if they already didn't have another game in the pipeline. The best thing they could have done was redeploy the employees to other projects... But that would have also been costly.

If you saw the studio talented enough for you to greenlight a big game by them why wouldn't they be talented enough to make something else for you? I don't get this "well we don't want the game anymore so you can all go to hell".

Hmm wonder if Disney still gets that sweet, sweet money?

I cant stand EA. Would love to see that company fold.

EA used to be so big. Nowadays they've got so little going on. Just clinging to their couple of successful franchises and hoping they can resurrect a few others

This is game studio where main person publicy said, she are hiring only black people because she wants same people as herself. White people create too much micro aggression

Oooh thats the “we dont hire white people cause theyre hard to work with” lady right?

Good riddance, rare W for EA!

Racists shouldnt be making games.

This likely happened simply cause they worked with EA, who's been laying workers off left and right this year. Sucks, since that game sounded promising.

@species People like that are objectively harder to work with. I know this from reading their awful posts on Twitter.

After 20+ years of marvel movies, I'm done with superhero stuff, either games or movies, except maybe spider-man.

I'm guessing it was a story mode in mind but it didn't have many open opportunities to turn it into a live service or to cram in as many microtransactions as possible.

The only surprise is it took this long to cancel. A terrible idea from the start.

Hope we won't hear something similar in the near future for Iron Man. From the both I was looking forward to BP game more tbh.

@Vivisapprentice Yet games that sounded promising on paper like Wonder Woman and BP ended up shuttering their entire development teams. (Wouldn't surprise me if EA also eventually canned their Iron Man game.) Wolverine hasn't been seen since its assets got leaked and may be in development hell for all we know.

The Arkham series is pressing the strength of the word "last few years," by the way. AK came out 10 years ago. Speaking of, you forgot Arkham Knights in your list of letdowns. That game was also awful.

All I'm saying is, these comic IPs rule the media landscape in most regards but they rarely get good, defining videogames to lay claim to. Where is an epic X-Men RPG? Where is a good Superman game? There are so so many opportunities for fun titles and we barely get anything to stand amongst the other videogame greats. Just always odd to me.

Man I feel stupid for thinking EA actually had a chance of being better. They were doing actually good with single player games and investing in new teams but they screwed up. Man AAA publishers are screwed in the West. Idk why any new teams or devs would want to work for companies like EA when you can start your own team like Sandfall.

@MFTWrecks in terms of cancelations and studios shutting, this isn't exclusive to super hero genre, I think the problem is they get excited and announce them way too early, then the studio can't pull together a good game and is ultimately canceled. This will happen all the time behind the scenes on unannounced projects that are new IP. There was also a rumour that Disney wants 30% cut on licensed games, then if someone like Sony takes 30% for you to sell on their store page and you have a game not coming together in early development it's probably best just to scrap

oh well. new ips please, enough rehashes/sequels & superhero fatigue

@Ken_Kaniff ....and see 1000's more people lose their jobs and livelihood ?? And affecting the whole video gaming industry? ..what a crazy comment, man

My condolences for the studio 🙏. But it's EA, they're the best when comes to killing their own studios.

EA - where studios & creativity go to die.

EA Sports - if it's in the game, it's not in the game

EA and Marvel had every chance to over see it well, yet they go, oh this isn't what we want, layoff/studio shut down. If they didn't have the right mentality, or could already tell why even allow such a studio anyway. Or they went eh give them a go to do whatever, give them a chance then let them go but really didn't want them anyway, I assume they may have considered that.

That aside the movies, a game whether same point in the universe/for the characters, or whatever. Yeah the movies were fair (only saw the first one) but yeah a game takes longer to make then a game, it's not like Batman/Spiderman that have gotten games or more going for a while so others to start is a bit tricky, compared to other works to focus on the character/universe and not as big scale as a game is but may be big scale for merch, other comics, other movies, etc.

If this is the same studio with the weird hiring process from EA then why did it take them this long. Or did they give them the 'possibility'. They should know they weren't capable with the mentality/mindset they had, however many staff with the skills and any effort made even meet EA's expectations not surprised. Not Concord like but probably just as awkward or taking time and not meeting EA's demands of design, deadlines and more. If so then they won't be missed.

Incompetent publisher, incompetent brand owning company, but maybe incompetent staff.

The staff come up with whatever they can, make formulaic games or whatever their ideas/skills can offer, or mindset of 'creativity' but not money making capable enough in a pub, exec, brand owner's stupid eyes.

Whatever they had it may have been alright probably. But probably not.

Not that I think much of modern era gaming being so formulaic, particular mentality and more but it was probably a fair game, due to whatever Black Panther's moveset, or whatever level design/open world it could have been. But that's me thinking that way rather then all the other stuff. How a character/world can be for a game, not what they actually made.

What a waste of 1-2 years. The staff's time, anyone's money and so on.

After how cool of an idea but how pathetically basic Marvel Midnight Suns was for a tactics game (I was looking forward to it till they made it too basic to play, as a newcomer tactics fan not impressed) anything can work and be executed well enough as some action adventure game or otherwise but as usual, scope, expectations and stupidity of leadership or design.

Are the staff all capable I'd assume so but who knows with a studio like that or the staff, but always fair to blame the leadership studio or publisher/brand company as they should understand people who are fit for a project, but then again so much communication nonsense happens or business deals that who even knows, many seem so pathetic of how convincing they are, the ones monitoring it, setting expectations to be met that can or can't.

Some staff may be incapable, they may be very capable but just not to other's demands or expectations so we could have had a good product but we will have to see if builds appear some day. Otherwise probably a problematic one.

Wait so there was this Black Panther game and another Captain America and Black Panther game being made? No offence but Black Panther isn't that compelling to have 2 games being developed.

EA cancelling a game and closing a studio, shocker.

Well, best of luck to the affected team from now on.

No surprise EA are clueless, look what they said to Bioware
"With EA bosses convinced that the nerd cave would spill out its denizens to any game with BioWare on the box, their philosophy became that "You didn't have to try and appeal to them. You had to worry about the people who weren't in the cave, which was the audience we actually wanted, which was much larger."

That's what happens when your going on a a stock buyback cut the studios etc to get the stock so you can pay your shareholders high dividends next year

From the announcement trailer we all knew this wasn't going to make it.

@Cornpop76 to be fair, batman and spiderman have had banger movies AND games partially because of their lores and villains/rogue gallery. the only other type of hero games i think were popular was ultimate alliance, that’s pretty much what people wanted the avengers game to be

and marvel rivals copied overwatch

@wildcat_kickz that’s not how things work. They have to recoup profit losses - it was a bad decision to start this to begin with but it’d be a worse decision to double down on the expenses and put other teams at risk of cuts.

You don’t just cancel a game if things are going well. So if things aren’t going well you don’t double down on a bad investment by giving an unproven team another shot to lose more money…

@Ajbr8687 I understand what you're saying in principle, but there are plenty of examples of games being cancelled and the team not being folded, so it's certainly not an inevitability. EA had already spent money on infrastructure, equipment, training, etc. It may not be the short-term fiscally responsible move to let them take another crack at it, but it's a more human response and may have led to a better game after chemistry and human bonds were created within the team over the last few years.

What EA did was predictable, but it doesn't make it any less sad.

Absolutely heartbreaking news. I hope the devs and all impacted land on their feet. Still hope a Black Panther or Wakanda focused game gets produced eventually.

@wildcat_kickz In fact, it is crazy because you're thinking backwards: those people weren't laid off because the game was cancelled. The game was cancelled because they needed to lay off people.

Videogames are a business, and businesses need to make a profit in order to be viable. When a company's financial expectation is not met, costs need to be cut. I know it sounds harsh and all, because it is. Life is harsh.

Sorry, but EA is not a jobs program. Crazy, I know.

@wildcat_kickz I agree that it’s sad and absolutely the fault of EA. What bothers me is the people who make the decisions to invest in something like this should be the ones held accountable. People might have left stable jobs for new opportunity and are now left in a bad situation.

That being said - I’m in a decision making role at a company and have had to shut down underperforming teams (thankfully nothing I started) and I always have to take into consideration the risk of keeping a team on and how that will effect the future compensation, stability and viability of the rest of my employees who are not effected by layoffs. You don’t want to put more pressure on teams that produce well to keep on high cost individuals that don’t produce…it’s a really hard balance and not always just “corporation bad”

I want to be clear that I’m not defending corporations across the board. I’m sick of the corporate greed as well - it’s just not ALWAYS so black and white.

@Art_Vandelay you are correct here but it might not be that easy.

Unless I’m missing something we don’t know the cause of this situation- was the team shut down because EA needed to cut cost across the board or was the team shut down because they were not performing, unable to hit deadlines, not working well together and the project was canceled?

Maybe Disney force the project to cancel due to them owning the license for some reason?

I do generally agree with you though - a lot of people who complain about the layoffs don’t understand the price of keeping people and how much pressure it puts on a business if that team isn’t producing profit. They are typically the same people that complain that game prices are too high…

@Ajbr8687 Sure, it's all conjecture. My opinion is based on how the industry has been trending over the last few years. You know, investments made during the covid bubble now need to be adjusted. At the end of the day though, the reason was probably manifold as you've pointed out.

@Art_Vandelay I think you're being pretty glib to score a point, but I broadly agree with what @Ajbr8687 is saying, in so far as it's always complicated. I'm not a fool and completely understand that making video games is a business. Not only that, personnel is by far the most expensive part of making video games (and is usually the most expensive part of every industry). I'm just really tired of hearing that a game gets cancelled and instead of giving the team something else to try, they just fold the whole department then and there. The fact that dev teams are operating on a knife's edge so often is absolutely insane to me. Can you image how much bedlam would happen if every industry handled failure this way?

@wildcat_kickz Apart from government and a few exceptions, pretty much every industry works this exact way. Yes, it is more notable in the creative industries especially in times of contraction, but any private company would (and should) be cost conscious and get rid of teams that don't perform. It's not greed, it's meritocracy, which is one of the bedrocks of modern civilization. This is the exact reason why the State is so dysfunctional.

@Art_Vandelay Who's merit, though? For all we know, the rank and file devs were exceeding expectations and the game was cancelled because EA thought it would only net $50 million in profit instead of $100 million. Let's also not pretend that EA is in dire straits.

I believe in an honest meritocracy, but if we're gonna sit here and debate hypotheticals, I don't really see why you need to be so callous, as if EA is really the unsung hero of this story.

@wildcat_kickz EA is neither good nor bad, it is simply behaving like any other private business does and should. You can't have the good of capitalism (videogames) without the bad (cycles of growth and contraction).