It has been a tough couple of weeks for the games industry. Recently, thousands of industry workers were laid off across the board – and some studios closed entirely. It was a period that saw projects and live games shut down – including the cancellation of EA’s in-development first-person shooter that was supposed to be based on the bounty-hunting activities of a Mandalorian protagonist.
Recently, Bit Reactor took to social media to stress that the Star Wars strategy game it has been working on for a while with Respawn Entertainment is ‘unaffected’ by the recent news.
That’s Something
Respawn and Bit Reactor announced their collaboration in 2022, shortly after the latter studio was founded. Since then, the developers have managed to keep the lid on the project, and there’s little that we know about it other than it’s being led by a former Civilization developer. Likely, the release date is still far in the future, but it’s assumed that the game is in a much better state than most, which is why it wasn’t impacted by the recent cancellations that occurred within EA’s studios.
In the post on Twitter, Bit Reactor’s representatives wrote:
Last week was difficult for the industry, and more so because of our strong relationships within the other teams at Respawn. But for those asking, we are still hard at work, and our game was unaffected by last week’s news.
Electronic Arts plans to move away from licensed IP that it doesn’t ‘own’ – including Star Wars. There are still plans in the pipeline to make a third Star Wars Jedi game, but that’s probably it. There’s a desire at EA to focus more on owned IP, and stripping 700 employees from the firm was seen as being the way to kickstart that effort.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that a Ghost of Tsushima PC port could be revealed soon
“It was…”, I would like to be as optimistic as the author of this article.