EA no longer has exclusive rights to Starwars games

[Arika]

 

Summary

 After many years of what a lot of people would class as disappointing games, the newly branded Lucasfilm Games has announced a new Starwars game that is not going to be made by EA meaning they have not renewed their multi year contract with the infamous publisher. 

 

Quotes

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“We’ve got a lot of stuff we’re ready to start sharing with fans,” Lucasfilm Games VP Douglas Reilly tells StarWars.com, “because we’ve been working quietly behind the scenes for a while now, waiting for this moment.”

 

And by “this moment,” Reilly is referring to a new direction and era for Star Wars and Lucasfilm gaming overall, as Lucasfilm Games is now opening the doors to developers that want to come play in the galaxy far, far away. “We’re looking to work with best-in-class teams that can make great games across all of our IP. We’ve got a team of professionals here at Lucasfilm Games who can work with the developers, shape the stories, shape the creative, shape the games, to make them really resonate with fans and deliver across a breadth of platforms, genres, and experiences so that all of our fans can enjoy the IPs that they know and love,” he says.

Case in point, the huge news that Lucasfilm Games and Ubisoft are collaborating on a new story-driven, open-world Star Wars game. It’s a genre long-requested by fans, and will come to life via Massive Entertainment, Ubisoft’s critically-acclaimed studio based in Malmö, Sweden. “We’re really excited about an opportunity to work with the team at Massive, led by David Polfeldt and the creative director, Julian Gerighty. We’ve spent almost a year now, working to get to know them and what they want to bring to the table,” Reilly says. “I’m a huge fan of them, personally. I think we’re really excited about where that project is going, because they have a unique vision for the story and the game they want to deliver.”

 

My thoughts

 While ubisoft may not have a fantastic track record recently either, if this means we can get an assassins creed style open world set in the star wars universe, then sign me up. Maybe even a return to strategy based games as well. 

 

The exclusivity with EA always struck me as a bit strange. Until fallen order, EA rarely seemed to try new things with Star Wars, at least now we're not just going to get battlefront after battlefront. 

 

I can't help but wonder if they are planning to focus more on games than huge budget movies given the response to the sequel trilogy. Either way, more SW games good, and not locked to EA better. 

 

Sources

https://www.starwars.com/news/lucasfilm-games-interview

[Slottr]

Gamers globally sense a feeling of pride and accomplishment

[sub68]

5 minutes ago, Arika S said:

if this means we can get an assassins creed style open world set in the star wars universe

holy crap I hope they do that

[sub68]

Battlefront 2(2005 by lucasfilm)>Battlefront(2014 by EA)

HMMMMMMMMMMMM

[demonix00]

8 minutes ago, Caroline said:

Not until 2023 which is when the exclusivity deal with EA ends as this new game isn't going to see the light of day until at least 2024 since this new non EA game is only just getting off the ground.

 

[sub68]

4 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Then EA killed Pandemic, screwed Bioware and DICE makes beautiful garbo.

yeah EA screws up alot

[Blademaster91]

5 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Pandemic|Bioware vs DICE. Then EA killed Pandemic, screwed Bioware and DICE makes beautiful garbo.

I agree EA killed off a lot of good game studios, hopefully Ubisoft makes a decent StarWars game.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, sub68 said:

holy crap I hope they do that

That would be neat, but Ubisoft has nearly as awful record as EA does when it comes to micro-transactions and Crunchtime/harassment.

[bit]

1 hour ago, Arika S said:

My thoughts

 While ubisoft may not have a fantastic track record recently either, if this means we can get an assassins creed style

i love that you nor anyone else that read the news can actually, you know, read. also let's not pretend that their track record recently hasn't been entirely subjective. the games technically have been fine, i can't remember the last time their game had a huge massive issue aside from the downgrade for watchdogs which was 6 years ago lol

 

 

24 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Ubisoft has nearly as awful record as EA does when it comes to micro-transactions

don't think so

[sub68]

35 minutes ago, Kisai said:

That would be neat, but Ubisoft has nearly as awful record as EA does when it comes to micro-transactions and Crunchtime/harassment.

who doesnt

[PlayStation 2]

EA giving Respawn the opportunity to make a Star Wars game was a much better idea than letting DICE do whatever the fuck it does with its Battlefield games for Star Wars. 

Never was massively interested in Star Wars in the first place, but I know the disdain a lot of people had with EA's Star Wars games... Battlefront 2 was not a good game at all, if anyone remembers that fiasco clearly.

[Delicieuxz]

EA's Star Wars license has resulted in a lost decade for Star Wars games. The deal stunk from the outset. It's too bad that Disney didn't know better about EA.

 

Maybe the prospect of losing their exclusive access to the license in a few years will motivate EA to start actually releasing games, like ones they developed to near-completion before canning to shift developers to less-worthy projects.

 

I want project Ragtag to still become a reality.

 

 

[Quackers101]

Would think they will do similar grind BS, that might be worse than what EA did in their battlefront series.

maybe not that bad, but for gameplay aspects might be worse for the grind. If they are going to do it like the assassin creed series.

Then Ubisoft creates a mix of destiny 2 with a HUB system on different planets with PvP on them, and space RPG.

Get resources from either area to upgrade your character, or pay 100s of different packs or resources to premium stuff.

 

The game doesn't have enough players and RIP.

15 minutes ago, handymanshandle said:

Never was massively interested in Star Wars in the first place, but I know the disdain a lot of people had with EA's Star Wars games... Battlefront 2 was not a good game at all, if anyone remembers that fiasco clearly.

Which battlefront? new or old? while both have their issues, I do find you can get more options in the older one and there was maybe more stuff in the even older battlefront 1?

[Donut417]

My boss was asking me about this today. If I heard about it. My reply was well I think its an EA title which means its going to suck. Because everything EA touches withers and dies. Ubisoft is not my favorite studio either but they should be able to do better. 

 

I have a feeling Disney wanted the game to sell well so they could make more money. So they decided to kick EA to the curb. Thank God. 

[PlayStation 2]

1 minute ago, Quackers101 said:

Which battlefront? new or old? while both have their issues, I do find you can get more options in the older one and there was maybe more stuff in the even older battlefront 1?

The 2017 one, kinda thought that I gave it away with the "fiasco" part.

[Retro1989]

I like Massive Entertainment, The Division 1 & 2's open world is done well and there's no "You need to climb this tower to give your bird better eyesight" stuff.

[WereCatf]

4 hours ago, Arika S said:

assassins creed style open world

So, a bland, uninteresting open world with bland, cookie-cutter NPCs and 99% of the map filled with cookie-cutter timewasters, plus a patch a couple of weeks after launch to include microtransactions? Mmmmm...I don't think that sounds particularly appealing.

[bit]

3 minutes ago, Retro1989 said:

I like Massive Entertainment, The Division 1 & 2's open world is done well and there's no "You need to climb this tower to give your bird better eyesight" stuff.

The first person that read the post 

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, Caroline said:

TIL micro-transactions are harassment too

I was on a mobile phone so I didn't want to get into too much detail. Basically EA and Ubisoft are two (of at least four) companies that I hesitate to buy from.

 

EA - Everything they touch turns into trash. Except EA sports. they're local and for whatever reason the sports leagues keep giving them licenses to put out the same game every year. They are sitting on a goldmine of IP but don't do anything with it except let other companies lap them when they don't put out the game people want with that IP. (eg Maxis and Origin games that much better games have since been made in those games likenesses that EA just sat and twiddled their thumbs about, trying to milk Star Wars.)

 

Ubisoft - 2020 was a huge flustercluck of Ubisoft behaving badly. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-07-11-new-report-on-ubisoft-reveals-more-shocking-sexual-harassment-allegations

 

Bethesda and Blizzard-Activision are the other two, but they're more of the "these companies sit on IP and are full of themselves.

 

I'm mildly neutral on Epic Games and Valve, I think both of their stores suck in complementary ways. Valve has pretty much abandoned making games, leaving it's fans to produce remakes and sequels to it's own games to sell on it's own store. Epic on the other hand only produces one game and has seemingly bet the farm on it.

 

All six of them have extremely risky business models by clinging to one IP for most of their revenue.

[TigerHawk]

Does EA even develop anything anymore? Or are they just a publisher these days taking 80% of profits from the development studios under their umbrella? I think EA Sports™ is a developer, but EA themselves?

 

I mean, I am not sure ubisoft is going to do a better job than EA, but its different and they deserve a chance at least.

[trag1c]

So they moved it from the most shittastic developer/publisher to the 2nd most shittastic developer. I guess they can't do any worse than EA...

[Brooksie359]

6 hours ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Pandemic|Bioware vs DICE. Then EA killed Pandemic, screwed Bioware and DICE makes beautiful garbo.

It makes me sad seeing all these companies releasing great games and then slowly over time start releasing worse and worse games until it becomes pointless to play their new games when the older ones are better. I use to love battlefield games when they released the first bad company game and the second one was even better and probably my all time favorite. Battlefield 3 was also super fun but after the battlefield games went downhill after that. 

[suicidalfranco]

From the pan to the fire

[Giganthrax]

I was about to shit on their decision to entrust Ubisoft with SW, but I'd be pretty down to play a generic Ubisoft openworld game set in the SW universe where you play as Mandalorian, not gonna lie.

 

I just hope Respawn Entertainment is going to get to make at least one more SW game. Jedi Fallen Order was pretty good. 

[Video Beagle]

Just related, I've seen rumblings in the geeksphere of an Indiana Jones game.