Disney closes Lucasarts.

[Anacronian]

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. 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 throughout 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 of Star Wars-themed titles for the PC—such as Dark Forces, X-Wing and Rebel Assault—were supplemented by games like the strategy title Afterlife, the Sam & Max series, and Schafer's Full Throttle.

In the 2000s, the company became more reliant on its Star Wars products and licenses sold to other developers as new efforts like Fracture failed to take hold. The decade's most notable successes—Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: Battlefront—were both externally developed, by BioWare and Pandemic Studios, respectively. LucasArts' last title to see mainstream success was 2008's Star 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.

Linky

[Vendetta]

And nothing of value was lost?


I haven't bought a Lucasarts developed or published game since KotoR 2 sucked because they rushed it out for christmas.

[TheFeniX]

On a related note, I was dieing to replay The Dig this week and was surprised to see they had an old LA adventure pack for sale on Steam.

I can't say I'm crying to terribly much about LA closing shop. They really haven't done a damn thing in the past decade and the SW IP still managed to crank out a whole load of shitty games without their involvement. When your best games of the past 5 years have "LEGO" in the title, it's time to pack it in.

Also, where's my CoD: Republic Commando Edition sequel? Man.. I'm so fucking jaded, I'd settle for a port of Jedi-Outcast/Academy.

[Starglider]

And nothing of value was lost?

Yeah, LucasArts produced innovative, interesting and generally very playable stuff through the 80s and 90s, but just went downhill steadily through the 2000s. All the good people left, in-house development became completely dysfunctional and the SW license was stripmined via third-rate external developers. As such probably best to put LucasArts out of its misery. It's sad for the devs who lost their jobs, but they should be used to it; entire dev teams being fired happens constantly in the games industry.

[Isolder74]

Was long time in coming. They made lots of great games but that was back in the 80's and 90's.

[Lord Relvenous]

This is less closing down a studio, and letting a studio finally die. Hopefully with Disney wanting to focus on "quality" we can get some good Star Wars games developed by competent studios.

[Stark]

You mean like all those great LEGO games?

[Lord Relvenous]

You mean like all those great LEGO games?

...yes?

I don't know if that's sarcastic or not, Stark, as I don't know how you liked the LEGO Star Wars games. They definitely were the best Star Wars games that have come out for a while, as low as that bar has been set. While certainly not for everyone, they were fun games that didn't worry about anything other than making the experience enjoyable.

[Stark]

Dude the only good Star Wars games for as long as I can remember are LEGO games: but Lucasarts paid for it. I guess now Disney will just pay for them directly.

Disney's approach to fanservice in games is probably more likely to change things than anything about their movie business. With TCW ending and the new trilogy in the cards, I would be surprised if we see anything set during the Clone wars, though.

[Darksider]

I'm trying to remember, how long has it been since Lucasarts actually developed a good SW game? They put out some games that I liked that were financially and critically successful during the 2002-2005 period, but those were all outsourced to other studios. The only SW game in a while that I can remember Lucasarts actually developing was TFU, and while i enjoyed playing it, the reviews and sales were average at best.

I don't think Lucasarts has actually developed a "good" Star Wars game since their height in the 90s with games like X-wing and Jedi Knight.

[TheFeniX]

Force Unleashed wasn't a bad game. It was just "decent" as more than a few elements held it back. TFU2 was just fucking sad. It's only redeeming quality was the back and forth between Starkiller and that blind guy, which made little sense in context. They cleaned up some of the issues in the first game, such as the atrociously slow UI and some of the targeting issues, etc. But the game just fell completely flat. It's funny because Star Wars games have always been fair game (at least in my experience) for reviewers to actually be honest with their reviews. I don't recall any punches being pulled for TFU, even though review mags were jerking it hard to the previews and TFU2 got fucking hammered for what it was.

I can't recall anything else they've developed internally since JK1. That said, their awful licensing and schedules pushed on developers sure as Hell didn't help the brand. I originally blamed Obsidian for the KOTOR2 trainwreck, but that was all LA. Additionally, I remember a short quip from a lead dev at Raven who stated they weren't allowed to keep patching JO or JA after a certain number due to their licensing contract with LA. OTOH, I don't know what kind of deal SOE had with LA for Galaxies. It seemed like SOE immediately jumped on the "Holy shit, WoW is popular, trash everything that makes this game unique" wagon as soon as subscriber money started flooding into Blizzard's bank account. But for all I know, LA was the one pushing them in that direction.

[CaptHawkeye]

Throw me in with the "can't remember the last good game these guys made". Oh wait I sort of can, Jedi Outcast, like more than a decade ago. Plenty won't agree with me on that one either. The LEGO games were made not made by Lucasarts, so they don't really count.

We're really missing nothing here by them pulling the plug. Total studio shakeups seem to yield better results than just sticking with brand names that's for sure.

[Stark]

Is that really fair, though? I mean I don't are about this case, but 'fans' of publishers are always willing to ascribe their developers successes to them.

[Terralthra]

Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy (both of which I enjoyed) weren't made by LucasArts. They were developed by Raven Software. The last one developed by LucasArts was Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight, in 1997.

[Lord Relvenous]

I'm trying to remember, how long has it been since Lucasarts actually developed a good SW game? They put out some games that I liked that were financially and critically successful during the 2002-2005 period, but those were all outsourced to other studios. The only SW game in a while that I can remember Lucasarts actually developing was TFU, and while i enjoyed playing it, the reviews and sales were average at best.

I don't think Lucasarts has actually developed a "good" Star Wars game since their height in the 90s with games like X-wing and Jedi Knight.

Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader probably qualifies. It was very well received by critics, and was the 7th best selling in 2001. The next game, Rebel Strike, wasn't universally panned, but it didn't have near the success Rogue Leader did.

[Darksider]

Was Factor 5 an in-house development team though? I thought they weren't part of Lucasarts.

[Vendetta]

I'm trying to remember, how long has it been since Lucasarts actually developed a good SW game? They put out some games that I liked that were financially and critically successful during the 2002-2005 period, but those were all outsourced to other studios. The only SW game in a while that I can remember Lucasarts actually developing was TFU, and while i enjoyed playing it, the reviews and sales were average at best.

I don't think Lucasarts has actually developed a "good" Star Wars game since their height in the 90s with games like X-wing and Jedi Knight.

Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader probably qualifies. It was very well received by critics, and was the 7th best selling in 2001. The next game, Rebel Strike, wasn't universally panned, but it didn't have near the success Rogue Leader did.

The Rogue Squadron games were made by Factor 5, not Lucasarts.

The last internally developed Star Wars game that could be described as good if you squinted a bit and remembered that it was 1997 and we didn't know any better back then was Jedi Knight. Everything since then has been externally developed.

[Vendetta]

Was Factor 5 an in-house development team though? I thought they weren't part of Lucasarts.

No, they were a seperate company. Started out making Amiga games, including Turrican (well known and received among Amiga types, basically a Metroid clone), worked with Lucasarts for the Rogue Squadron games, and then shat out Lair for Sony and died.

[DaveJB]

Looking through the list of LucasArts games, it seems like the last truly good game that they developed in-house was Grim Fandango all the way back in 1998. That's just sad...

[Lord Relvenous]

I'm trying to remember, how long has it been since Lucasarts actually developed a good SW game? They put out some games that I liked that were financially and critically successful during the 2002-2005 period, but those were all outsourced to other studios. The only SW game in a while that I can remember Lucasarts actually developing was TFU, and while i enjoyed playing it, the reviews and sales were average at best.

I don't think Lucasarts has actually developed a "good" Star Wars game since their height in the 90s with games like X-wing and Jedi Knight.

Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader probably qualifies. It was very well received by critics, and was the 7th best selling in 2001. The next game, Rebel Strike, wasn't universally panned, but it didn't have near the success Rogue Leader did.

The Rogue Squadron games were made by Factor 5, not Lucasarts.

The last internally developed Star Wars game that could be described as good if you squinted a bit and remembered that it was 1997 and we didn't know any better back then was Jedi Knight. Everything since then has been externally developed.

I stand corrected. From my brief investigation, it looked like Lucasarts did it.

[Darksider]

Yeah, the bit in the article about closing down LucasArts as a studio and switching it to licensing isn't the part that's got me upset, its the cancellation of Star Wars 1313 and First Assault. Those were the first two SW titles in a while that I was genuinely looking forward to.

[Anacronian]

Star Wars 1313 might be saved.

[Havok]

The LEGO games were licensed so this is a non-story.

[TheFeniX]

More interesting to me is, from Anacronian's link, is that Raven decided to dump the JA/JO source code onto the Internet. I doubt anything will come of it, but there's still a relatively crazy group of modders out there for the games. As part of this, what's left of the online community manages to be even crazier.

The last internally developed Star Wars game that could be described as good if you squinted a bit and remembered that it was 1997 and we didn't know any better back then was Jedi Knight.

That's worth a laugh.

[Ford Prefect]

The only good game actually made by LucasArts in the last ten years was The Force Unleashed, and the sequel was so bad it was clearly a fluke. It's not exactly a great loss to the industry.