The Respawn Layoffs Once Again Tell Us What We Already Know

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Peter Hunt Szpytek

Published May 5, 2025

Followed

It’s never enough. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Respawn was hit with a round of layo🙈ffs last week that impacted 100 developers across a handful of different projects. In addition to the layoffs, EA canceled two incubation projects – 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:one unannounc💫ed Star 🃏Wars first-person shooter and an unannounced Titanfall extraction shooter.

Every time news breaks that a studio has been hit with layoffs, I get frustrated. It’s depressing to hear that the people who put their hearts and souls into creating impactful art and entertainment 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:aren’t able💮 to find stability while doing so. The Resp💟awn layoffs, however, reinforce something sinister about🌃 the industry that we’ve known for a long time:

No matter how successful a studio is, no matter what it brings to the table, whether it makes critically acclaimed games or commercially successful ones or bot💞h, it will never be enough for corporate publishers.

What More Can You Ask?

Respawn Entertainment is an incredibly successful studio. It developed one of the most successful battle royal💟es on the market with Apex Legends, created the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:widely beloved Titanfall series, and helmed the Star Wars Jedi franchise – one of🍨 the most iconic Star Wa🧔rs game series of all time. When thinking about what more a publisher could want from a ไstudio, it’s tough to imagine what Respawn could ꦯdo to add more value in their eyes.

EA has been laying off its teams left and right. In addition to the 100 developers from Respawn, 200 more were let go across EA’s various studios in this current round of layoffs. This is nothing new for EA, however, since 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:BioWare announced layoffs in January reportedly leaving the team with less than 100 people working on the next Mass Effect game, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:nearly 700 𓆏workers were let go in March 2024.

When looking at the pattern here, there’s a very clear common denominator. EA seems unfit to manage its portfolio of studios successfully. Respawn is successful, it’s a renowned studio that’s made critical darlings like Titanfall 2 and live-service pillars like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Apex Legends. What more can EA want? What could Respawn have done to avoid th🐠is? If the answer is nothing, then the studio cannot possibly be blamed. Instead, the blame lies solely on the shoulders of a publisher mismanaging itself into th🌸e ground.

The Line Must Go Up

It’s heartbreaking, but we’ve seen this story before. “in all key measurements” and that it “couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered” before 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:suddenly closing the studio. We’ve seen 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:plenty of games flop, resulting in studio closures and layoffs, but it feels like, in recent years, there have been an൩ equal number of success stories followed up by the same results.

We all know what the problem is: It’s mismanaged expectations, mismanaged budgets, and the absolute fantasy of year-over-year growth in perpetuity. It’s n🧔ot enough to simply be successful, studios need to cost less money while raking in more cash.

When thinking about the people at the top who make these decisions, I’m reminded of a tweet mocking exponential growth models that do not take ▨context ꦚor industry patterns into account. “” it reads, “He’s on track to weigh 7.5 trillion pounds by age 10.”