The sudden cancellation of Electronic Arts’ Black Panther came as a surprise, as did the collapse of the entire team behind it. EA’s official statements did not reveal much about the title, but a new report from Bloomberg sourced from anonymous former employees reveals why the game met its grim fate, along with speaking to some of the ambitious features it would have had.
The report alleges EA was frustrated by the game’s lack of progress. It had spent around four years in development and had not left pre-production. This resulted in it making “the least amount of progress” when compared to other titles on EA’s slate. This was also despite recently passing a milestone that had executives assess the game and choose if it would continue development or not.
Even though some stated the game was finally beginning to come together, certain events reportedly kept it from coming together more quickly. Cliffhanger Games had only begun truly building out its studio, as many came onto the team within the last year.
According to former employees, some of this sluggishness was attributed to the game’s take on the Nemesis System from Monolith Productions’ Middle-earth games. Coincidentally, this studio was also closed and had its Wonder Woman game canned, a title that was also using its own version of the Nemesis System.
Essentially, this system lets players interact with an enemy faction that remembers what players do in order to build a more personal relationship with them. It was the signature element of the Middle-earth games and had yet to be truly emulated in another series, despite some games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey taking a more simplistic crack at it. Cliffhanger was also being headed by Kevin Stephens, who was vice president and studio head at Monolith.
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The Nemesis-like System in Black Panther was supposed to, corroborating previous reports, concern Skrulls, a shapeshifting race in the Marvel universe. They could shapeshift and pose as allies and react to the player. Shuri, T’Challa, and Killmonger would also be competing for the Black Panther mantle, and players would cultivate rivalries or allyships with them, presumably through a mechanic similar to the Nemesis System. These newer angles added more complexity, and it was reportedly tough to demonstrate these more procedural systems to the executives at EA.
Having to simultaneously build a new game and a new studio also didn’t make things go faster. EA ending remote hiring also increased costs since Cliffhanger’s base in Kirkland, Washington, is quite expensive. According to the United States Census Bureau, the average household makes $143,533 per year and the per capita yearly income is $88,015.
As also noted by Bloomberg, President of EA Entertainment and Technology, Laura Miele, spoke highly of the game in September 2024 at the company’s Investor Day. She said Black Panther had “vibrant characters” and talked highly about its “all-new technology” and “groundbreaking design and storytelling” that were supposed to “transfer across many games and studios” at EA. She then compared it to the Star Wars: Jedi series because of how it benefited from a successful partnership with an outside company.
The end of the report states that the closure and cancellation came suddenly during an all-hands meeting. Regardless, Motive Studio’s Iron Man game and two other mysterious Marvel titles are still in development at EA. Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, the other video game starring Black Panther, is not an EA-published game, but it is, as far as the public knows, still in production, too, despite its recent delay.
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