It’s a sad day today for all gamers as Disney has shifted Lucas Arts from a development studio to a licensing studio – resulting in a number of lay offs – and High Moon Studios suffered from lay offs right when Deadpool was about to get released. Do note everyone that none of these two studios are shutting down, although you could say that about Lucas Arts. However, Lucas Arts have not developed any memorable game in a long time and since that studio is now turned into a licensing studio, we may see more Star Wars games than you may think.
As Disney’s statement reads:
“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.”
As stated, Lucas Arts will be still active, though it won’t be developing games anymore. Lucas Arts latest game was the Kinect kill-me-if-you-are-gonna-make-me-play-this game, Kinect Star Wars.
Truth be told, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was a great game with an amazing physics engine, however the company was a shadow of its former self. Games like Outlaws, The Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Dark Forces, Full Throttle are what made Lucas Arts the company it is today. Sure thing, Republic Commando and Armed & Dangerous were amazing games, however they could not come close to the quality of those aforementioned titles.
High Moon Studios, on the other hand, suffered from some lay offs, right before Deadpool hit the stores.
As an Activision rep told Joystiq:
“Activision Publishing consistently works to align its costs with its revenues – this is an ongoing process. With the completion of development on Deadpool, we are taking a reduction in staff at High Moon Studios to better align our development talent against our slate. Approximately, 40 full-time employees will be impacted globally. We are offering those employees who are impacted outplacement counseling services.”
And there you have it everyone. Lucas Arts and High Moon Studios are going down, though they are not closing as of yet.
It will be interesting to see how things unfold and whether Star Wars 1313 will find another home. GameInformer hinted that this new Star Wars game could be saved, though nothing is certain at this point.
As a Lucas Arts rep told GameInformer:
“It is worth noting that we are looking for proven external partners who can help us provide video games to our fans. We still believe in the video game industry, we still will provide Star Wars games, we’re just looking at different models rather than internal production… They’re evaluating everything. There’s always a possibility that it [Star Wars 1313] can still come out via licensing.”
So fingers crossed everyone for Star Wars 1313’s fate. We’ll be sure to keep you up to date with everything regarding the Star Wars game that wow’ed everyone with its visuals, so stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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