Disney shuts down Lucasarts

Disney Shuts Down LucasArts, Cancels Star Wars 1313 And Star Wars: First Assault

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. 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," Disney 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. Today, it's official: the longrunning studio is no more.

The company was acquired as part of a mega-merger last year where Disney acquired LucasFilm and its sibling company from Lucas. Maniac Mansion, one of LucasArts' first self-published titles, introduced the "SCUMM" game engine driving several well known point-and-click adventure titles the company published into the 1990s. The Secret of Monkey Island, created by Ron Gilbert and co-written by Tim Schafer (both now at Double Fine), is one of the publisher's best-known graphical adventures using the engine.

The publisher's apogee was certainly in the 1990s, when a wave ofStar Wars-themed titles for the PC—such as Dark Forces, X-Wingand Rebel Assault—were supplemented by games like the strategy titleAfterlife, the Sam & Max series, and Schafer's Full Throttle.

In the 2000s, the company became more reliant on its Star Warsproducts and licenses sold to other developers as new efforts likeFracture failed to take hold. The decade's most notable successes—Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: Battlefrontwere both externally developed, by BioWare and Pandemic Studios, respectively. LucasArts' last title to see mainstream success was 2008'sStar Wars: The Force Unleashed. A 2010 sequel didn't live up to expectations. The last game published by LucasArts was Kinect Star Wars for the Xbox 360 last year, a game widely panned by critics.

http://kotaku.com/disney-shuts-down-lucasarts-468473749

 

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/gamenews.php?id=102392


Well, what this means game wise for the SW universe remains to be seen.

 

http://forums.superherohype.com/showthread.php?t=455523

 

http://forums.superherohype.com/showthread.php?t=455519

 

All 3 of you posted this at the same time. Nice

It really sucks that all those people were laid off and that Star Wars 1313 is no more. I just hope Disney doesn't just focus on new trilogy games only.

 

Just merge them all, ****.

 

Agreed!

 

Can't say I'm really sad about it. They haven't put out anything good in a long time.

 

Well, that's horses**t. Disney can go die in a fire

 

I just remembered that they did a bunch of other non-SW games also. All those franchises possibilities are pretty much dead in the water unless someone else picks them up.

 

Disney licensed DuckTales to Capcom again. I'm guessing stuff like that is the future for them.

 

Lucas Arts has been terrible as late for over a decade actually. From mediocre to bad projects.
So far what they've done with Episode VII and their team they've got for that has been great, I'm sure they will lend it out (the brand) to actually good developers.

Lucas Arts in house has been terrible for way over a decade. In the 90's they rocked but after Chin and Tim left, it's never been the same. Get Bethesda to make a Star War RPG.

And they said right in the statement they want to license the property out. That is real good news.

 

Hopefully Double Fine is able to wrangle Grim Fandango away from Disney with this going down.

 

Ooo I would just do backflips if Tim got his hands back on Grim Fandango.

 

And Full Throttle.

Also please let someone good get Indiana Jones.

Sucks about 1313 and First Assault. Sucks more for everyone who's out of a job, though. Hopefully they saw this coming and had time to find new jobs.

 

Yes and yes. With 1313 we have no idea if it was good or not, their track record was not holding up too well, so I figure the game must not have been that great so they canned it.

But yes to Full Throttle, and I too would love a good Indy game.

 

1313 was probably expensive to make, let alone market it. The risks for these types of games have grown significantly in recent years.

 

Well I'm hoping now we get some post Jedi games that may tie into Episode VII.

 

There are lots of studios offering jobs to the former LucasArts devs. If anyone there had any talent, they shouldn't have trouble finding work.

 

One more cancelled game, one less studio, more unemployed
Not yay

 

I'm sure we will.

I'm also sure that a few years down the road this will be seen as a positive move for Star Wars games.

 

Oh ya with out a doubt. I kinda wonder how that meeting went with the Obsidian devs that had some ideas.

 

We need a new indiana jones game

 

this means that Star Wars 1313 is cancelled