As EA cancels its Black Panther videogame, it begs the question: if big franchises aren’t safe, what does it mean for the rest of the industry?
In the expensive, upside-down world of the triple-A games industry, projects get cancelled all the time. Studios with familiar-sounding names close without fanfare. People regularly lose their jobs with little apparent notice.
A pair of recent cancellations at Electronic Arts and Warner Bros feel rather different, however. In late May, it was announced that EA has scrapped its long-in-the-works
Black Panther
game, and has closed the studio making it, Cliffhanger. It’s a decision which could affect dozens if not hundreds of employees.
The announcement came roughly three months after Warner Bros decided to cancel a high-profile superhero game of its own:
Wonder Woman
was scrapped in February, and Monolith Productions, the respected studio behind
Shadows Of Mordor
and more besides, died with it.
Neither of these were cheap, licenced tie-ins.
Black Panther
was said to be a sprawling,
open-world sandbox adventure
with an unusual-sounding story system, according to EA’s own job listings. It’s likely that Cliffhanger’s take on Wakanda would have taken some stylistic cues from the above-mentioned
Shadows Of Mordor,
since the studio was headed up by Kevin Stephens – one of the creatives who worked on that game at Monolith Productions.
Similarly,
Wonder Woman
was also said to have included
an iteration of
Shadows Of Mordor’
s innovative (and patented) Nemesis system, which saw in-game characters adapt their behaviour based on a player’s actions. It was reported in February that Warner Bros Games had spent around $100m on
Wonder Woman’
s development, however, and after the project was scrapped and restarted at least once over its four-year cycle, the publisher eventually decided to pull the plug entirely.
The cancellations point to a somewhat ominous shift in the videogames industry and – possibly – entertainment as a whole. The
Black Panther
and
Wonder Woman
movies have collectively earned far north of $2bn worldwide. Although the games weren’t directly based on them, we’re talking about some of the most recognisable names on the planet.
For years, it was taken as a given that major publishers are wary about investing money in original ideas that aren’t based on recognisable intellectual properties. Yet here we are in 2025, with two IP-based games being axed within weeks of each other.
So what’s going on? A
statement
issued by EA boss Andrew Wilson in February 2024 may provide some clues. In retrospect, it serves as foreshadowing for the company’s recent business decisions.
“We are… sunsetting games and moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry,” Wilson wrote in a lengthy post. “This greater focus allows us to drive creativity, accelerate innovation, and double down on our biggest opportunities – including our owned IP, sports, and massive online communities – to deliver the entertainment players want today and tomorrow.”
Black Panther,
evidently, was one of those “licensed IP” projects that EA decided to ‘sunset’. It’s all part of a bout of corporate restructuring that could affect around 300 roles, though a percentage of those may find other work elsewhere in the company, according to
IGN
.
In a recent internal email, also seen by
IGN
, EA Entertainment president Laura Miele said that the plan is to “put our creative energy behind the most significant growth opportunities.” These opportunities are said to lie in some of EA’s biggest in-house franchises, including online multiplayer titles like
Battlefield
and
Apex Legends
.
Events in early 2024 may have spooked these big publishers somewhat. In February 2024, right around the time EA’s head honcho published his memo, Warner Bros admitted that its live-service videogame
Suicide Squad: Killer The Justice League
– based, of course, on a well-known DC comic and film franchise – had “fallen short of expectations.”
Dogged by a troubled development phase and multiple delays,
Suicide Squad
was the work of a respected developer – Rocksteady – which had been coaxed into stepping away from the single-player arena in which it had found success, and into the always-online multiplayer space. It’s thought that Warner
lost
around $200m on the whole project.
As is often the case, publishers seem to have taken the wrong lessons from
Suicide Squad’
s failure. The problem wasn’t that Rocksteady, known for its massively successful
Batman: Arkham
titles, had been pressed into making a game in an overcrowded and cut-throat sector dominated by
Fortnite
and
Apex Legends.
The problem was the superhero IP itself. (This rather overlooks that, say, Insomniac’s
Spider-Man
games have been wildly popular in recent years.)
There’s also another figure on the horizon that looks even more attractive to CEOs than old-fashioned things like superhero IPs. In a May
earnings call
with investors, EA’s Andrew Wilson talked excitedly about the ways artificial intelligence will allow his company to “build, scale and personalise experiences, from dynamic in-game worlds to delivering authentic athlete and team likenesses.”
“Our developers are using AI to push the boundaries of what’s possible in design, animation, and storytelling,” Wilson said, “helping us deliver deeper, more immersive gameplay. This is about amplifying the power of this technology to unlock new possibilities for the future of interactive entertainment.”
Much has been written about the rising cost of triple-A games, and questions over whether the need for bigger and more detailed experiences is sustainable in the long-term. Right now, there are hopes that the advent of AI technologies will reduce the dizzying costs of making and maintaining games; in February, Microsoft announced
Muse
, a generative AI model which can currently take existing can take existing videogame footage and use it to generate new sequences. The theory is that it’ll one day help developers visualise how ideas and mechanics could look without spending months developing a proof-of-concept.
One expert quoted by
Eurogamer
has cast doubt over some of Microsoft’s loftier claims about Muse, however, including one that it could transform game preservation by allowing old software to run on modern hardware. All the same, some of the industry’s biggest companies are investing heavily in AI, with mixed results.
Sony has experimented with AI-generated versions of well-known
PlayStation characters
, and it didn’t exactly impress fans. Ubisoft unveiled some creepy AI non-player characters
last year
. Most recently, an AI-powered Darth Vader which used a synthesised voice of the late James Earl Jones sparked its
own backlash
. Even though CEOs have acknowledged that the use of AI could risk tarnishing their companies’ reputations, there’s still a sense of optimism that such technologies will one day transform the industry for the better.
In the interim, publishers are clearly becoming ever more cautious over the projects they choose to back. Within the past few weeks, we’ve also seen job losses at Respawn and the cancellation of a
Titanfall
game, as well as redundancies at the once-mighty BioWare.
In the wake of
Black Panther’
s cancellation, EA has said that it remains committed to making bankrolling other games with Marvel names attached, including
Iron Man
(at Motive Studios) and at least
two other
unannounced titles. If I were a developer working on those videogames, however, I’d be feeling rather anxious right now. And if even games based on the likes of
Iron Man
and
Black Panther
aren’t safe, then the industry as a whole is surely in an unusually volatile place right now.
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Black Panther | Something rather worrying is happening in the videogame industry
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