Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Developer Says Morale at Respawn is at an “All-Time Low”

The recent cancellation of Black Panther and the closure of the studio developing the game, Cliffhanger Games, Patrick Wren – senior encounter designer on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – has taken to social media platform BlueSky to reveal that morale at Respawn Entertianment has been quite low.

While he didn’t elaborate much about it, he responded to another post bemoaning the cancellation of Black Panther with a post simply saying that, “Morale has been at an all-time low.” His post continued, “I can say that much.”

Wren’s statement likely comes in light of EA having canceled quite a few in-development projects at Respawn Entertainment. Several of these titles were referred to as “incubation projects”, which would likely indicate that these games were still very early in their development cycles before they were ultimately canceled.

Back in April, EA had announced that it was laying off 300 employees from across its various divisions, including employees from Respawn. The studio confirmed that two of its incubation projnects had been canceled – one of which was rumoured to be a multiplayer extraction shooter set in the Titanfall universe, and the other simply being codenamed R7. Around a 100 employees that were affected by the lay-offs were reportedly part of the Respawn Entertainment staff.

“We are treating our people with care and respect throughout this process, working to minimize impacts by helping affected employees explore new opportunities within the company when possible and providing support during the transition,” said EA in a statement announcing its lay-offs.

Another multiplayer shooter incubation project was reportedly cancelled back in March, according to a former employee. “The unannounced incubation project I was a part of for the past year was canceled this week, so I am joining the group of extremely talented and kind people in the games industry searching for a new role,” wrote the employee in a LinkedIn post that has since been deleted.

Reports of EA canceling Black Panther and shuttering Cliffhanger Games came about earlier today. EA Entertainment president Laura Miele sent out an email to members of the company’s staff announcing the decisions, which also involved lay-offs.

“These decisions are hard. They affect people we’ve worked with, learned from, and shared real moments with,” wrote Miele. “We’re doing everything we can to support them – including finding opportunities within EA, where we’ve had success helping people land in new roles.”

In light of this, developers that had worked on the Black Panther games took to social media to talk about their time working on the title, while also talking about how sad it was that more people wouldn’t get to experience what was turning out to be an “ambitious and special” game.

“I was a part of this incredible crew,” wrote concept artist Karla Ortiz in a post on social media. “We were working on such an amazing and stunning game. Detailed, rich, beautiful. It breaks my heart the world won’t see it. It also breaks my heart to say goodbye to the team. What an honor to work with you all. What a sad day.”