The news came as a shock to many Cliffhanger employees, according to people familiar with this week’s events. Cliffhanger was actively hiring staff, and Black Panther had recently passed what EA calls a “gate” — a development milestone where executives review a game’s progress and decide whether to continue production. The team had momentum, and the project was coalescing, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing nonpublic information.
Others familiar with the project told me that EA executives were frustrated that the game had not yet left the pre-production phase after nearly four years in development.
As EA assessed its portfolio earlier this year, it eliminated some of the projects that had been in development for a long time but had made the least amount of progress, including incubation projects at Respawn and this Black Panther game. A representative for EA declined to comment on the cancellation.
One reason for the slow progress on Black Panther was that the studio had only just begun scaling up. Many of the workers laid off this week were hired less than a year ago, including some who only joined in the last few weeks and months, said the people familiar.