Titanfall Fans' Outrage Over Extraction Shooter Cancellation: Is This the End for Titanfall 3?

Fans of the beloved Titanfall series are grappling with disappointment after learning that EA has canceled yet another incubation project at Respawn Entertainment, alongside laying off numerous employees across its incubation, Apex Legends, Star Wars: Jedi, and EA Experience teams. According to Bloomberg, the canceled game, codenamed R7, was set to be an extraction shooter within the Titanfall universe. While this wasn't the much-anticipated Titanfall 3 sequel, the news still hit hard for fans yearning for a follow-up to Titanfall 2, which remains without a sequel nearly a decade later.

"I just fell to my knees at Walmart," said one player, encapsulating the emotional impact, while another expressed their frustration by writing: "I CAN'T TAKE THIS ANYMORE."

Not all reactions were negative, however. Some fans believe that an extraction shooter set in the Titanfall universe might have been a risky move, potentially damaging the franchise further. "Best thing that could've happened as far as the continued existence of this franchise is concerned," posited a Reddit user, arguing that a Titanfall extraction shooter could have flopped and led executives to wrongly conclude that the franchise was no longer popular.

"I’m fine with this one being canceled," responded another, with a subsequent comment following with: "Extraction shooter lmao. Good riddance."

"So sick and tired of 'extraction shooters'. They're so formulaic and boring. I don't want to loot a bunch of useless stuff and camp in an attic or sit in a bush for 20 minutes or risk getting shot moving through big open fields. Give me quick matches, wallrunning, and titans blasting," suggested a fan, emphasizing the desire for the core elements that made Titanfall unique.

"Got sad. Read extraction shooter. Was literally okay," summarized another, showing a mixed response to the news.

The layoffs affected approximately 100 jobs at Respawn, including roles in development, publishing, and QA for Apex Legends, as well as smaller teams working on the Jedi series and two canceled incubation projects, one of which was reported on in March, and the other believed to be the Titanfall universe extraction shooter.

These layoffs follow a pattern of restructuring and job cuts at EA over recent years. Earlier this year, EA restructured BioWare, moving developers to other projects and laying off others. In 2023, EA eliminated 50 jobs at BioWare and an unknown number more at Codemasters. In 2024, a larger restructuring led to 670 workers being laid off company-wide, including around two dozen at Respawn.

“Titanfall 2 came out, did what it did, and we were like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna make Titanfall 3,’ and we worked on Titanfall 3 for about 10 months, right? In earnest, right? We had new tech for it, we had multiple missions going, we had a first playable, which was on par to be just as good if not better than whatever we had before, right? But I’ll make this clear: incrementally better, it wasn’t revolutionary. And that’s the key thing, right? And we were feeling pretty decent about it, but not the same feeling as Titanfall 2 where we were making something revolutionary, y’know what I mean?”

Alavi explained that the decision to cancel Titanfall 3 was influenced by challenges in the multiplayer component and the burgeoning popularity of the Battle Royale genre, sparked by PUBG's release in 2017. “The multiplayer team was having a hell of a time trying to fix the multiplayer, because a lot of people love the multiplayer. People love Titanfall 2 multiplayer,” Alavi said. “But the people who love Titanfall 2 multiplayer is a very small number of people. And most people play Titanfall 2 multiplayer and think it’s really good, but it’s just too much. It’s cranked up to 11, and they burn out a bit fast. And they’re like, ‘That was a great multiplayer, that’s not something I continually play a year, two years,’ right? So we were trying to fix that. We were trying to fix that from Titanfall 1 to 2, trying to fix it from Titanfall 2 to 3, the multiplayer team was just dying. And then PUBG came out.”

The internal pivot to Apex Legends came as Respawn developers found themselves more engaged with a Battle Royale map using Titanfall 3 classes than with the traditional multiplayer modes they were developing. “And at the time, I had just literally become [the] narrative lead designer on Titanfall 3. I had just pitched the story, the whole game, that me and Manny [Hagopian] had come up with. We made this big presentation and then we went off at break, and came back from break, and we talked about it and we were like, ‘Yeah, we need to pivot. And we need to go make this game.’ We literally canceled Titanfall 3 ourselves ’cause we were like, ‘We can make this game, and it’s going to be Titanfall 2 plus a little bit better, or we can make this thing, which is clearly amazing.’ And don’t get me wrong, I will always miss having another Titanfall. I love that game. Titanfall 2 is my most crowning achievement, but it was the right call. That is a crazy cut. Such a crazy cut that EA didn’t even know about it for another six months until we had a prototype up and running that we could show them!”