Disney shuts down LucasArts

[DKT27]

Conglomerate will shift to a licensing model for future Star Wars games.

The company behind games ranging from Monkey Island and Grim Fandango to X-wing vs. TIE Fighter and Jedi Knight is effectively no more. Disney announced today that it is shutting down internal development of games through its LucasArts subsidiary.

"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," Disney said in a statement obtained by Game Informer. "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."

While it seems the LucasArts name will live on as a brand to handle Star Wars game licensing going forward, the developer is, for all intents and purposes, no more. It's the end of a game development brand that goes back to 1982. Reports indicate that all of the roughly 150 employees at LucasArts have been let go and that work has been stopped on cinematic shooter Star Wars 1313 and Xbox Live Arcade title Star Wars: First Assault.

While it's a sad end, today's announcement isn't all that surprising. Back when Disney acquired LucasArts as part of a $4 billion Lucasfilm acquisition last October, we noted that the company's gaming efforts didn't seem to be a big focus for the entertainment giant. Even before the acquisition, LucasArts had seen rounds of layoffs that reduced the company from its 500 employee heights in the mid-2000s. There was even a hiring freeze instituted in September.

Furthermore, Lucas had already been licensing out the Star Wars name to other developers for a while, for titles ranging from Bioware's The Old Republic to Pandemic's Star Wars: Battlefront and Travellers Tales' Lego Star Wars games, among others. This kind of outside licensing will certainly continue under Disney, ensuring that the Star Wars gaming tradition will continue. The last Star Wars game to be created in-house by LucasArts itself was Kinect Star Wars, which wasn't exactly a critical blockbuster.

Less clear is what will happen to LucasArts' well-remembered, classic non-Star Wars adventure games. If we had to guess, we'd suspect these titles will languish in rights limbo as Disney neglects to develop them or license them out to interested parties. Then again, Telltale did have some success with its Sam & Max revival recently, so maybe Disney will be willing to relax its grip on some of its other new, neglected properties too.

Regardless of the practicalities, today's news represents another snipped thread that can be traced back to the golden era of early video and computer gaming. If you need us, we'll be drowning our sorrows at the cantina.

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[Amigaspace]

Good luck with your greedy, crappy Star Wars titles. Monkey Island and the like for me.

[DKT27]

Good luck with your greedy, crappy Star Wars titles. Monkey Island and the like for me.

You fight like a cow. :sob:

[DKT27]

After LucasArts closure, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy go open source

Raven Software licenses both titles under GPLv2, puts code up for download.

We're all still reeling from Disney's shuttering of LucasArts yesterday, and tributes to the once-indomitable game studio are sprouting up all over the Web. One such tribute sure to bring a smile to programmer geeks everywhere comes from development house Raven, which has this morning released the source code for its two Star Wars titles: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. The two FPS titles were released in 2002 and 2003 and continued the story of Kyle Katarn, the bounty hunter and Jedi first introduced in 1995's Dark Forces.

"We loved and appreciated the experience of getting to make Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy for LucasArts," noted Raven in a statement. "As a gift to the persistently loyal fanbase for our Jedi games and in memory of LucasArts, we are releasing the source code for both games for people to enjoy and play with."

The two titles were very popular at release, with Jedi Outcast featuring one of the first deathmatch multiplayer experiences set in the Star Wars universe. According to Kotaku Australia, the code released this morning is only for the single-player portion of both games. This is typical of source code releases for major titles, as the networking code used in multiplayer often uses licensed or proprietary chunks of code that cannot be licensed as open source. Both games are available under the GPLv2 license.

We're working on our own "Ars remembers LucasArts" tribute post, which should be up later today.

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