Stig Asmussen, director of the Star Wars Jedi series, has opened up a new studio with more industry veterans

Stig Asmussen, the renowned game director who was in charge of the development of both Star Wars Jedi games at Respawn Entertainment for EA, has announced the opening of his new studio, Giant Skull.

Asmussen, who’s resume includes titles like the original God of War games, Mortal Kombat, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, left Respawn Entertainment late last year. While there, he acted as game director on the highly successful Star Wars Jedi series, but eventually chose to go his own way and open this new studio.

As reported by IGN, this new studio is officially called Giant Skull, and its team is comprised of Asmussen himself, alongside “around 30 people, many of whom are veterans of Star Wars Jedi and Fortnite.” Some of these developers hail from places like Epic Games, Rocksteady Studios, Respawn Entertainment, Riot Games and more. And while their names might not be as famous as the faces of the games they worked on, they’re integral parts of their development as well, like Lauren McLemore (lead producer for Fortnite), Patrick Murphy (art director on League of Legends, Valorant, God of War, and Fortnite), Jeff Magers (design director on the Star Wars Jedi series), and more.

Giant Skull is already working on their first project.

At the time of writing, no details have been revealed about what Giant Skull could be working on aside from confirmation that the team’s first project is “a AAA single-player focused action-adventure,” and that the game will be developed using Unreal Engine 5.

While unrelated, the news comes only a few weeks after EA canceled another Star Wars project at Respawn Entertainment. “We have decided to pivot away from early development on a Star Wars FPS Action game to focus our efforts on new projects based on our owned brands,” said Laura Miele, president of EA Entertainment. While a third entry into the Star Wars Jedi series is still under development at the same studio, the cancelation of this project came as part of a massive wave of layoffs that saw the dismissal of 5% of the staff at EA, around 700 employees.

Just this year, thousands of workers in the video game industry have been affected by massive staff reductions at places like Sony Interactive Entertainment, Activision Blizzard, Twitch, Microsoft, Embracer Group, and more. This after 2023 saw constant announcements of the same sort.

Asmussen revealed that they’ve “secured significant funding” that is enough to support their projects, so we hope that the team is safe from this terrible trend that has struck the industry as of late.