Disney, which recently acquired LucasFilm and everything that fell under its banner, has shut down development at the LucasArts game studio, effectively killing off two Star Wars projects in the works.
Disney said in a statement “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. 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 may be unfortunately new for fans of the studio that gave the world Grim Fandango, the Monkey Island series and several notable Star Wars games but there is some hope for the Star Wars gaming franchise now owned by Disney. The Star Wars brand will live on, but Disney will be licensing any games based around it out to external development houses.
The closure on Disney’s part isn’t all that surprising, considering how many recent game developer closures the company has seen just recently thanks to poor sales from their titles. The last studio to be shuttered was Disney’s Junction Point, which put the team responsible for Epic Mickey out of work.
Source: Ars Technica