‘Black Panther' and Its Team Deserved Better Than This

Gizmodo

2 days ago

Days ago, the video game sphere was thrown into shock when EA revealed it'd canceled its Black Panther game. The project, announced in 2023, was to be the debut of developer Cliffhanger Games, which was headed up by developers who made Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. With its game dead, Cliffhanger's been shut down, and anyone not transferred elsewhere within EA's various internal studios has been laid off.
At the time of the game's cancellation, Cliffhanger hadn't revealed anything about Black Panther, and all we had to go on was a job listing indicating it'd be a single-player, open-world title. In the wake of the project and studio's end, we now know some of it would've involved several playable characters—from T'Challa to his sister Shuri and son Azari—fighting Skrulls invading Wakanda. This game would've featured Skrulls posing as allies and relationships formed between the other non-playable heroes and other NPCs in Wakanda. For all intents and purposes, it was to be similar to the Nemesis System introduced in the Middle-Earth: Shadow games. Several alums from Monolith's Lord of the Rings duology reunited to form Cliffhanger, but EA felt the studio was moving too slow, which came in part because Cliffhanger was building staff alongside its prototypes and builds to show EA how it would all come together.
What makes this situation even more sad is how not shocking it is that Black Panther got killed. Last year, EA canceled a single-player Star Wars FPS from Respawn, its own internal studio responsible for the hit Jedi games, and which has also had two separate, attempted spinoffs for its own Titanfall series suffer the same fate. This past February, WB Games put the kibosh on its Wonder Woman game from Monolith (which also got closed down), and we learned in April of a Blade Runner game that'll likely never see the light of day. The Last of Us, Spider-Man, Halo; whether it's a whole game or a specific mode, from an established franchise or something new, in development or just recently came out, the industry has been full of cancellations in recent years, with layoffs following not long after.
On the outside looking in, a Black Panther game feels like an easy call to make. Superhero video games are in a good place right now, and this specific character's been an A-lister since his debut in Captain America: Civil War in 2016 and his own 2018 movie became a massive, global phenomenon. He's part of the ever-increasing lineup of Marvel Rivals and is set to co-lead Skydance's 2026-bound Marvel 1943, and whether it'd be T'Challa, Shuri, or Azari, the hero has never headlined a game on his lonesome, making EA's decision to kill it so frustrating. It certainly doesn't appear to be affecting its three-game deal with Marvel; both companies have since said the partnership will continue with Motive's Iron Man game and at least one other project yet to be announced. But in the wake of this news, and EA's alleged treatment of its original, non-multiplayer franchises like Dragon Age, it's hard to fully buy that either of these projects, or any single-player project at the publisher's internal teams will come out, which puts the people actually making those games in an unfair light.
The games industry's problems didn't start with Cliffhanger and Black Panther, and they'll continue well past this moment in time. But it speaks volumes that an attempted game of this caliber starring a character from one of the biggest media franchises around right now can't get off the ground and the team behind it is paying for EA's past, unrelated financial troubles. More than anything, the studio should've gotten to have its moment in the sun, as all developers do for the games they've spent nearly a decade or less of their lives making. Those opportunities feel like they're becoming increasingly rarer in this industry, and it won't be good for anyone should it continue becoming the norm.