EA is firing hundreds of developers and cancelling projects

Despite recording record profits, in large part thanks to EAFC's microtransaction sales, EA is now letting go of hundreds of employees across its studios, cancelling projects and shutting down at least one studio.

We'll start off with the major cancellations. Respawn's in-development Star Wars shooter, claimed to be based on The Mandalorian, is no longer coming out, so the Star Wars 1313 dream is dead for a second time. Additionally, Ridgeline Games, the studio that just lost its director and was tasked with working on future single-player Battlefield campaigns, is shutting down entirely.

There are other unannounced projects that have now been cancelled, but chances are, some details on those projects will leak out sometime in the future.

EA is also planning to let go of 5% of its workforce, a move that will see around 700 employees losing their jobs. EA is framing this as a ‘restructuring' effort, as it intends to abandon licensed IP (like Star Wars) and refocus its efforts on franchises it wholly owns.

Exactly what this means for EA Motive's upcoming Iron Man game, or EA's Black Panther project, remains to be seen. It is also expected that while no more Star Wars games will be made by EA, Respawn will still wrap up its Star Wars Jedi series with a third game.

KitGuru Says: EA makes billions from its sports games alone, so it is hard to comprehend how the company found itself in a position where it needs to cut costs. Unfortunately, the folks impacted at EA are going out into an industry where most of the major companies have been undergoing layoffs, which could make finding new work quite tricky. 

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