Respawn Entertainment Restructures: Key Layoffs and Unannounced Projects Halted

Image courtesy of Respawn Entertainment/EA.

Apex Legends creator Respawn Entertainment released a number of developers earlier this week and has terminated an undisclosed, incubated project.

According to IGN, a “small” number of employees were let go as part of the project’s shutdown. At least one of these departures was voluntary, while a former executive assistant (in a now-deleted LinkedIn post) revealed that the project she had been associated with since 2024 was scrapped.

This project is thought to be a multiplayer shooter for which Respawn had been recruiting over the last year. This marks the developer’s third project cancellation in recent years. Respawn has several teams and has tried to diversify beyond Apex Legends and the Star Wars Jedi titles, yet all efforts were halted by parent company EA.

The first was reportedly a single-player game set in the same universe as Titanfall and Apex Legends, codenamed ‘Titanfall Legends.’ EA canceled the project in 2023 during a weak financial quarter that year, largely due to its director Mohammad Alavi departing the studio a year earlier.

In 2024, Respawn terminated its second project, a single-player Star Wars action-FPS. Its cancellation coincided with the closure of Battlefield developer Ridgeline Games, as both were victims of a 5 percent workforce reduction across EA’s teams.

Little was known about this recently-canceled project, but according to journalist Jeff Grubb, it was being developed by the team behind the Star Wars game. Respawn’s last significant release was 2023’s Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, which was ported to last-gen consoles in 2024.

Alongside the third Jedi game, which will be the first entry without director Stig Asmussen at the helm, Respawn is also involved in creating a Star Wars strategy title. This project, developed by Bit Reactor, was not impacted by EA’s cuts earlier in 2024.

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