Apex Legends and Titanfall developer Respawn Entertainment was reportedly working on a new multiplayer shooter. While it hadn’t been officially announced, as caught by The Game Post, a former employee of the studio indicates that it may have been cancelled.
Taking to LinkedIn in a since-deleted post, former executive assistant and production coordinator at Respawn Emilee Evans confirmed the cancellation of an unannounced “incubation project”.
“The unannounced incubation project I was a part of for the past year was canceled this week, so I am joining the group of extremely talented and kind people in the games industry searching for a new role,” she posted.
Considering the fact that Evans is now looking for a new role in the industry, there are chances that others that had been working on the game over the last year have also been laid off, or moved to another project.
In the meantime, Respawn may begin working on a new version of its popular battle royale Apex Legends. Revealed during a recent quarterly earnings call, EA CEO Andrew Wilson has said that, while ongoing support for Apex Legends will still continue, in the long term, “a more meaningful update” for the title will be needed.
This stems from Wilson stating that the business trajectory of Apex Legends, despite its original success, has been on a downward trend.
“Apex is probably one of the great new launches in our industry over the last decade and has been loved by that core cohort,” said Wilson. “We’ve had over 200 million people play the game. However, the trajectory of the business of that franchise has not been headed in the direction that we have wanted for some time.”
The long-term plan of a big update to Apex Legends was referred to by Wilson as a 2.0 version of the game. However, he did say that this long term idea will only be possible after the release of the next Battlefield game.
“The second phase, and I think I’ve talked about this before, is we do believe there will be a time where we need to do a more meaningful update of Apex as a broad game experience, and the team is diligently working on that. You should imagine we probably wouldn’t drop that on top of a Battlefield launch,” said Wilson. “So from a timing standpoint, our thinking right now is that that would exist post-Battlefield.”
“Sometime on a longer-term time horizon, there will be an even bigger, more meaningful update to that broader game experience,” he said. “An Apex 2.0, if you will. This will not be the final incarnation of Apex.”
Aside from Apex Legends, the most recent title by Respawn Entertainment was Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Check out our review for more details. The studio’s last shooter before Apex Legends was the critically-acclaimed Titanfall 2. Read our review of that game for more.