EA Gives Respawn the Chop, Slashes 400 Jobs & Titanfall Spin-Off

Well, it looks like Electronic Arts (EA)’s infamous guillotine has made yet another appearance—and this time, it’s Respawn that’s feeling the sharp end.

In a rather corporate-sounding statement dressed up with vague pleasantries, Electronic Arts announced it’s pulling the plug on two of Respawn’s hush-hush projects—one of which was apparently an extraction shooter set in the Titanfall universe. You know, the series people actually wanted EA to revisit. Bold move, Cotton.

Naturally, this pivot wasn’t just a quiet shuffle of some Gantt charts. According to Bloomberg, the culling came with a hefty human cost: roughly 100 employees at Respawn were shown the door, with another 200 to 300 EA staff from other departments following suit. That’s up to 400 folks losing their jobs—enough to populate a small battle royale match of their own, ironically.

The official line? EA is “realigning teams” to better serve its “strategic priorities.” Translation: the projects weren’t selling investors on dreams of golden yachts and NFT skins, so they got the axe.

Meanwhile, Respawn is being told to double down on the Apex Legends grind and crank out the third chapter of its Star Wars Jedi series—both proven cash cows in a field now littered with the bones of riskier ideas.

If this story sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Just last year, EA dropped nearly 700 employees as part of a similar “refocusing” strategy. EA’s version of a spring clean is starting to resemble a full-blown hurricane.

And remember that other mysterious Star Wars game, headed by Medal of Honor legend Peter Hirschmann? Yep, that’s been binned too. No lightsabers for you.

In the end, the only constants in life are death, taxes, and EA cancelling the games we were actually looking forward to.