Staff were informed of the shutdown this morning, according to a reliable Kotaku source. Some 150 people were laid off, and both of the studio's current projects—Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313—were cancelled. Disney will still use the LucasArts name to license games, but the studio is no more. Hypothetically, the company could license First Assault or 1313 to a different developer, but those would be different games entirely. “After evaluating our position in the games market, we’ve decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games," LucasArts parent company LucasFilm said in a statement. "As a result of this change, we’ve had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles.” This comes after weeks and months of rumors involving the studio, which was acquired by Disney last fall. In September, LucasArts put a freeze on all hiring and product announcements, which many staff saw as the beginning of the end. In February, we started hearing rumors that the studio might be shuttered. Today, it's official: the iconic development house is gone. http://kotaku.com/disney-shuts-down-lucasarts-468473749
http://www.endorexpress.net/2013/03/bloomberg-looks-at-how-disney-bought-lucasfilm/ That is a link that should give further insight into what's going on. LucasArts may no longer be but the big picture is still in tact.
Disney does it again... Climax/Blackrock, Propaganda Games, Junction Point and now LucasArts... who will be next?
considering lucasarts hasn't put anything decent in the past decade it should have happened sooner really
lol, those titles are so old. Only decent title on the list u mentioned was KOTOR 1/2 and Jedi Kinight academy.
Wankers, didnt even release an HD version of podracer (off to watch ep1), great memories from some of the ps1 starwars games and I also quite enjoyed Unleashed 2, which is great with mods. I think they should have a sale on all lucasArts games with proceeds going to the now un-employed.
Every game on that list was fantastic, par in my opinion TFU. I firmly believe Outcast to be a superior game to Academy. Regardless, all of those games were released within a decade of todays date. That said, while KOTOR 2 was a fantastic game when it worked, it was a horrible buggy mess. Much improved by fan efforts to fix the game and restore content. As for the OP: I'm not sure what to think about this. Part of me feels sad, but another part that played TFU2 and TOR thinks it might be for the best. After all, this doesn't mean that we wont see anymore Star Wars games. I do hope we see 1313 picked up however, that looked like it could have been good.
Guess you've never played Republic Commando, which still had populated servers last year. This news is very disturbing. Disney are full of **** and 1313 would've been profitable for it's engine alone. If they added mod support, the sales would've sky-rocketed. Oh well...another gem buried...
Jedi Outcast/Academy were made by Raven, Kotors by Bioware/Obsidian. I'm sure LucasArts did contribute something little in addition to marketing and a legion of lawyers (because Activision's 10000 lawyers weren't enough), but honestly I believe those doing the bulk of the real work would have been able to do it all just as well, under a license. So, even if LucasArts does become nothing but a licensing name, it might still work just as well. But then again, like HonoredShadow said up there, since I was a JO/JA modder, I wouldn't particularly dare to trust Disney to understand a thing about the value of modding games. It was hard enough with LucasArts and Activision back then.
Who cares the Starwars games from Lucasarts have been pretty average for a good few years now and its not only the Starwars franchise ever since Ron Gilbert and Tim Schaefer left the company there games have gone down hill tbh. Not only that any starwars movies that come out will suck compared to the original trilogy it dont matter how many effects you put in there as the depth of the chrarcters, onscreen charisma, The story and the time of when the originals were released will never ever be beaten. Lucasarts/lucasfilm gone/shutdown...so what who cares there not as innovative as they used to be a gamescompany or moviemaker.
I agree. The 2nd Starwars trilogy sucked. And there were only a handful of good Starwars related games including KOTR and Forced Unleashed. And it is possible that the 3rd Starwars trilogy will suck worse than (eps 1-3) did.