A group of individuals who formerly worked at the now-shuttered Cliffhanger Games on its canceled Black Panther game have been picked up by Wizards of the Coast for a new project.
As reported by GamesIndustry.biz, the group is led by Monolith Productions veteran Michael de Plater, who previously was director of design on Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and VP, creative for Middle-earth: Shadow of War.
“We were actually able to bring him and 14 key people that he’s worked with there – and many of them at Monolith – to incubate a new game for us,” said Wizards of the Coast president John Hight to GamesIndustry.biz. He added that the project is still in the very early stages, and is expected to go through a “lengthy concept process.” Hight compared it to a similar new D&D video game project Wizards of the Coast is supervising under Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order director Stig Asmussen.
The 14 other developers joining de Plater are veterans of Cliffhanger Games, a studio formed under EA in 2023 largely comprised of veterans from de Plater’s Shadow of Mordor team. The studio was working on a single-player, action-adventure, open-world Black Panther game as part of a multi-title collaboration between EA and Marvel.
However, the game was canceled and the studio closed earlier this year as EA moved to focus on only a small handful of franchises: Battlefield, The Sims, Skate, and Apex Legends, alongside its sports division. It is unclear how many individuals total were impacted by this shut-down, as others were also laid off at the same time from EA’s mobile and central teams, though it’s believed that the number was less than the approximately 300 individuals EA cut earlier in the year across Respawn and EA Fan Care.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
