REACTION - Another nonsense closure as Cliffhanger Games gets shut down and Black Panther is cancelled
Wakanda temporarily.
By Jonathan Garrett
28/05/25
Once again a studio is announced with much fanfare and promise, attracting development pedigree that spans AAA studios across the industry, and is then summarily dismissed before a single title is launched. Cliffhanger Games was revealed to the world by EA all the way back in July 2023. It’s conceivable that they were starting to staff up and prototype well before this. Years of work. And now they’re done.
They were in partnership with Marvel Games working on an original Black Panther game (not to be confused with Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, which is still cooking over at Skydance New Media). We’d seen nothing but a simple logo tease, and some vague press release platitudes about the potentiality of such a project. Fast forward to 2025 and everyone is being laid off, additional redundancies are being actioned, and that’s a wrap.
This has similar energy to Sony’s partnership with, and eventual shuttering of, Deviation Games, another studio formed on the promise of delivering a new IP that was then unequivocally axed before releasing anything. After years spent investing in these titles, did they really have nothing to show for it? Were these games in such rough shape that there was no saving them? These are questions that will likely remain unanswered.
This is perhaps more disconcerting when you consider that EA has had mixed success with some of their latest non licensed sports titles. Dragon Age: The Veilguard was generally received well (certainly compared to BioWare’s other recent efforts) but didn’t bring the house down in terms of sales. Although Split Fiction is a a juggernaut, that’s a Hazelight title through and through. Immortals of Aveum and Tales of Kenzera: Zau also failed to connect.
The hope is that EA doesn’t become more hesitant to take risks; the industry needs big publishers backing these new experiences to keep things moving forward and to avoid stagnation. However, the commercial factor is important, and for sustainability, these big investments need to lead to some kind of return. Regardless, Cliffhanger’s closure and Black Panther’s cancellation still stings, and we hope the affected developers land on their feet.
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
