Respawn Announces Mass Layoffs At 'Apex Legends' And 'Star Wars Jedi' And Scrapping Of Two Development Projects
Respawn Entertainment, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts since 2017, announced layoffs for its teams working on Apex Legends and the Star Wars Jedi franchise on top of the shuttering of two projects that were in development.
The company announced the layoffs on X, “At Respawn, bold ideas, creative risks, and passionate storytelling have always defined who we are. That spirit has carried us through incredible highs — and sometimes through difficult changes, too.”
“As we sharpen our focus for the future, we’ve made the decision to step away from two early-stage incubation projects and make some targeted team adjustments across Apex Legends and Star Wars Jedi,” the statement continued. “These decisions aren’t easy, and we are deeply grateful to every teammate affected — their creativity and contributions have helped build Respawn into what it is today. We’re offering meaningful support to those impacted, including exploring new opportunities within EA.”
The company then provided updates on what to expect with Apex Legend and the Star Wars Jedi franchise.
First, for Apex Legends, it stated, “While the team will continue to refine gameplay and bring new ideas to upcoming seasons, we’re also investing in what’s next for the franchise — exploring bold experiences that push the boundaries of competitive play while staying true to the spirit of competition, creativity, and integrity that our community expects.”
For Star Wars Jedi, it said, “Within the Star Wars universe, we’re excited to build new stories — with the next chapter of the Star Wars Jedi series aiming to raise the bar again for storytelling and gameplay.”
It is unclear how many employees are being laid off, but a report from Jason Schreier at Bloomberg claims around 100 are being let go.
Apex Legends is still one of the most popular games on Steam. In the last 24 hours it hit a peak concurrent of 181,080 players, which was good for the game with the fourth highest peak concurrent players behind Counter-Strike 2, PUBG: Battlegrounds, and Dota 2.
However, the game has been on a downward trend since the release of Season 16 in February 2023 when it hit its all-time peak of 624,473 concurrent players. The game did recently release Season 24 in February of this year and saw the peak players spike to 226,225 from a low of 153,733 in January at the end of Season 23.
READ: Rumor: Nexon To Create New StarCraft Game
As for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, the 2019 game hit a peak concurrent of 46,550 on Steam when it released.
Respawn would announced in June 2021 that the game had achieved 20 million players “across all consoles, platforms, and subscription services.”
READ: 'Ghost Of Yotei' Directors Respond To Accusations That The Game Is Woke
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor hit an all-time peak concurrent player count of 67,855 back in 2023 when it released.
It is unclear how many players played the game or units Respawn sold, but EA said in its Q1 FY24 results that the game “launched to critical acclaim and commercial success” and that “the game is entertaining millions of players around the world … we’re seeing players spend more time in-game than its predecessor”
What do you make of Respawn announcing these layoffs and these project cancelations?
NEXT: Sucker Punch Confirms That The 'Ghost Of Yotei' Protagonist Is Not A Samurai
A[ex wasn't going to have the same kind of staying power as Fortnite. I am surprised with SW Jedi considering both games as claimed did well, is laying off. I would understand if Ubisoft had knocked it out of the park with it's SW game but they bombed in comparison. I also would say maybe Lucas is taking a break since Game Studios are showing the place ideology over good products but so does Lucas film now that the toxic feminist run it.