EA Cancels Mobile Apex Legends and Battlefield Games, Shuts Down Industrial Toys Studio

Electronic Arts announced that it is canceling its Apex Legends Mobile and Battlefield Mobile games. And as a result, it’s shutting down its industrial toys game studio.

Apex Legends Mobile debuted last year, bringing Respawn Entertainment’s hot Apex Legends shooter game to mobile devices. It won Apple’s Game of the Year for 2022 as well as Google Play. Now this game will be closed in 90 days. Battlefield Mobile was in soft launch, but it will also end.

In a blog post, Respawn Entertainment cited the slipping quality of Apex Legends Mobile updates as one of the reasons for discontinuing the title. EA made the announcement when it released earnings for the third fiscal quarter ended December 31.

“At Respwn, our goal is to provide players with games that are consistently great. After a strong start, the content pipeline for Apex Legends Mobile has begun to fall short of the bar for quality, quantity and cadence. is,” the blog post said. “That’s why, after months of working with our development partner, we’ve made the mutual decision to retire our mobile game. Although disappointing, we’re proud of the game we launched, Apex Legends. We are grateful for the support of the community and are confident that this is the right decision for the players.

This decision will likely affect some studios. Tencent and Lightspeed were working on Apex Legends Mobile. And Industrial Toys was working on Battlefield Mobile.

It’s unclear how many jobs will be affected by the closure of the toy industry, which was started in 2012 by Hello co-creator Alex Seropian, along with Tim Harris and Brent Pease.

It’s a sad end for a veteran mobile game studio, which created exciting shooter games like Midnight Star. EA acquired Industrial Toys in 2018, when the studio had 14 people. It is not clear whether Siropin will remain on board. We covered them from the studio’s first announcement. After that, EA said that Industrial Toys was working on a Battlefield Mobile title.

“Mobile lags year-over-year, and at a run rate of $1.2 billion, compared to $700 million prior to the Glu Mobile and Golf Clash (acquisitions),” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pector said in an email. ” on GamesBeat. “Those two should have added $800 million ($1.5 billion run rate), so mobile is tracking about 20% where it should be.”

Starting today, January 31st, Respawn will disable all real-money in-app purchases in the game as well as remove the app from web stores. During this period, players can spend their existing Syndicate Gold and continue playing the entire game. On May 1, 2023 at 4 PM Pacific Time, Apex Legends Mobile will stop working in all regions, and will no longer be playable.

“We understand there will be many questions regarding this decision and want to assure our players that we are here to help,” Respon said. “Our love for the Apex universe and our players continues. We look forward to exploring this universe, its characters, and its stories with you. In the meantime, we appreciate your continued support and patience as we They navigate to the next steps.”

Respawn said it will not provide refunds for real money purchases per the terms of the EA User Agreement. This decision for Apex Legends Mobile is platform specific and independent of the game on PC and Consoles.

“As a franchise, Apex Legends is strong, and we look forward to sharing exciting updates in the future,” said Respawn.

RIP Battlefield Mobile

The changes to the Apex Legends and Battlefield mobile titles represent a change in strategy and leadership at Respawn and EA. The change came after Byron Bade left Activision’s Call of Duty franchise to become Battlefield’s senior vice president and general manager.

If you look at what Activision has been doing with Call of Duty, they moved all their game studios to a common Call of Duty game engine, so that the games are interoperable from year to year and across the franchise. It also hinted at the intention to have Call of Duty: Warzone 2, Call of Duty Modern Warfare II and Warzone Mobile on the same engine as well as the same player universe.

This means mobile players will soon join Warzone 2 PC and console players in the same matches. It caters to gamers who don’t care what platform they’re playing on — they just want to play with friends. This is something that happens in a game like Fortnite, but it’s unclear how well it works since mobile controls can feel more difficult than controllers or mouse play.

However, Activision is moving towards this unified model, so it can integrate different player bases. And it looks like EA is thinking about the same thing in terms of having a game with a unified player base across all platforms. (This does not necessarily mean that EA will have a single engine, as its stated policy is for teams to choose their own engines).

In the blog post, Respawn said, “We have a vision for the future of Battlefield. Vince (Zampella, co-founder of Respawn), Byron and the studio’s strong leadership are moving forward to create great experiences that players can enjoy. Collects on multiple platforms.

The post added, “We had a game in development, which made sense at the time, but as the industry has evolved and our strategy has changed, we’ve decided we need to make sure our players have the best experience.” In order to best serve our vision, we had to pivot from the current direction. We ultimately decided that in order to achieve our goal(s) for the franchise, we had to re-imagine how we would do Battlefield on mobile. How to live

Respon said that as it created its vision for Battlefield and observed market changes, the company determined that the current direction was not aligned with where it wanted to take the franchise.

“We’re exploring how mobile fits into our strategy, with more to come,” Respon said. “We are extremely committed to unlocking the immense potential of Battlefield. We are working hard to develop Battlefield 2042, and are already preparing for our future Battlefield experiences in our multiple studios around the world. are doing

The company continues to work on Battlefield 2042, which has improved in its recent multiplayer seasonal updates after a rocky launch.