Electronic Arts has canceled Respawn Entertainment’s in-development project set in the universes of Apex Legends and Titanfall.
Reports of a new single-player game outside of the Star Wars projects being worked on at Respawn Entertainment begin to be shared in 2022.
According to the latest reports, Electronic Arts is said to have canceled a single-player game in development by Respawn Entertainment set in the Apex Legends and Titanfall universes. The launch of Apex Legends proved to be a major shift to Respawn Entertainment’s focus of development as it abandoned the single-player/multiplayer titles Titanfall in favor of the successful battle royale genre. Since then, Respawn Entertainment has proven that its single-player game-making talent is worth supporting with productions like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, but EA may not have been entirely convinced by that talent.
Reports of a new single-player game not part of the Star Wars projects being worked on at Respawn Entertainment began to be shared in 2022. Job listings for the project are called “Apex Universe” FPS Incubation Project” began to appear and was discussed by the game world. A developer who left the company later confirmed that they had contributed to Respawn Entertainment’s “single-player Apex universe game”. However, an official announcement for the game being in development was never made.
Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier recently reported that EA has canceled the unannounced single-player Apex Legends game. No explanation was given for the cancellation, but the report notes that EA is making the cut following a “disappointing outlook” for the current financial quarter. The project’s codename is said to be Titanfall Legends and it was started under the direction of Mohammad Alavi, the former developer of Call of Duty, Titanfall and Apex Legends, who left Respawn Entertainment in early 2022.
This isn’t just the cancellation of a single game, but the end of another single-player-focused team-building effort at Respawn Entertainment.
About 50 developers were working on this game at the time it was cancelled. The report indicates that EA will try to find positions for these developers in other projects, but developers whose publishers cannot fulfill the project will be offered severance packages and dismissal. In other words, this isn’t just the cancellation of a single game, but the end of another single-player team-focused effort at Respawn Entertainment.
Respawn Entertainment has been an unfortunate focus for EA’s recent cuts. The publisher is also canceling Respawn Entertainment’s Apex Legends mobile version. Given the overall success of Respawn Entertainment, both with Apex Legends and their Star Wars single-player efforts, it’s surprising to see EA choose to focus on the studio to cut back. That certainly implies that EA is not confident in the future of Apex Legends and is pulling back on future investments.
This news will be especially disappointing for fans of the two-part Titanfall games. While neither Titanfall nor Titanfall 2 have been hugely successful projects, at least compared to Apex Legends they have a devoted fan base that has been asking for Titanfall 3 to come out for years. Even if the newly canceled single-player game Apex Legends shares the same universe as Titanfall, it will certainly still be well received by this community. Either way, hopefully Apex Legends and Titanfall fans will get another Respawn Entertainment single-player title with renewed vigor.
