The public perception of EA has been pretty mixed for a long time now. The larger EA has grown over the last few decades, the more controversies it's found itself at the center of. From the infamous "EA Spouse" blog that shed light on the company's rampant crunch culture, to it being branded as the "Worst Company in America" in both 2012 and 2013 by Consumerist, to its overabundance of loot boxes and microtransactions in games like FIFA and Star Wars Battlefront 2, EA has seen more than its fair share of controversies. But even in the face of those controversies, EA has still managed to broker a deal with Marvel.

Announced back in October 2022, EA confirmed that it had secured a "long-term deal" to develop at least three major action-adventure games using the Marvel license. While different developers will be handling each project, there's still a lot of pressure on EA to handle this license with care. Marvel is putting a lot of faith in EA, and hopefully, that faith isn't misplaced.

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Marvel Is Betting Big on EA

EA Has At Least Three Marvel Games In Development

While EA's original announcement stated that it would end up producing three Marvel games, just two of those projects have been revealed so far. The first of these projects is EA Motive's Iron Man game. Though the iconic Marvel hero has had a few solo video game outings before, none have really delivered a gameplay experience worthy of such a character, except maybe Camouflaj's Iron Man VR. The pressure is on for EA Motive to give Iron Man the solo video game adventure he's always deserved, and thankfully Motive seems like a studio that's unafraid of the challenge.

Back in July 2023 — around nine months after Motive's original Iron Man game announcement — EA announced that a new studio named Cliffhanger Games would be working on the publisher's second Marvel-licensed project, a Black Panther game. Not much is known about EA's Black Panther aside from that it'll let players explore Wakanda and that it'll be "story-driven." Much like Iron Man, Black Panther is a beloved Marvel character, and there's a lot of pressure on Cliffhanger to knock it out of the park, especially considering Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra will likely beat it to the punch with its own version of the hero.

While EA hasn't yet announced its third Marvel video game project, the two it's confirmed to be in active development are already a pretty tall order. While Motive and Cliffhanger are more than capable of producing excellent Iron Man and Black Panther games, EA is the one ultimately at the helm of it all, and it wouldn't be the first time the publisher has buckled under the pressure of working with a beloved license.

EA Doesn't Have The Best Track-Record With Disney-Owned Franchises

All the way back in May 2013, it was announced that EA would hold exclusive access to the Star Wars license when it came to the world of video games. With a whole universe at its fingertips, fans expected EA to start pumping out Star Wars games left and right, but that didn't happen. Instead, over the course of the next decade, EA would release just five major AAA Star Wars games, those being two ill-fated Battlefront games, two much better-received Star Wars Jedi games, and the odd but surprisingly solid outlier Star Wars: Squadrons. Though it had its positive moments, EA's time with the Star Wars license was deemed fairly disappointing, and there's a very real possibility that it could fumble the bag again, but this time with Marvel.

Marvel

Marvel is a brand associated with a wide array of popular superhero comics, movies, television shows, and merchandise. The company owns the rights to popular characters like The Avengers, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Deadpool, and many more.