Disney has terminated all LucasArts employees and halted all ongoing projects.
Employees were informed of the studio’s closure yesterday. Around 150 people were laid off and the studio’s two ongoing projects – Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313 – were canceled. Disney will continue to use the LucasArts name to license games, but the studio itself no longer exists.
Disney hinted that the current games could be licensed to another publisher or developer, but that is very unlikely, according to industry insiders. Lucas himself was said to be interested in an option for “one or both games,” but apparently nothing came of that. A source familiar with the situation said: “With the teams now basically being dispersed I think both games are effectively dead forever.”
Another insider said the chances of 1313 being licensed were “effectively zero.”
“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,” said LucasFilm, the parent company of LucasArts, with. “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.”
After weeks and months of rumors surrounding the studio that Disney acquired last fall, this decision still comes as a bit of a surprise. In September, LucasArts stopped adding new employees and announcing new products. In February there were first rumors that the studio could be closed. It’s official since yesterday: the iconic development studio no longer exists.
The studio was part of a mega takeover last year: Disney acquired LucasFilm and all of its subsidiaries from George Lucas. Maniac Mansion, one of LucasArts’ first self-published titles, introduced the world to the “SCUMM” engine used in numerous popular point-and-click adventure titles the company released in the 1990s. The Secret of Monkey Island, created by Ron Gilbert of Double Fine’s Tim Schafer and co-written by Tim Schafer, is perhaps the publisher’s best-known graphical adventure to use this engine.
The publisher certainly celebrated its greatest successes in the 1990s, when, in addition to numerous Star Wars-themed games for the PC – such as Dark Forces, X-Wing and Rebel Assaul – games such as the strategy title Afterlife, the Sam & Max series and Schafer’s Full Throttle was brought onto the market.
In the 2000s, the company increasingly relied on its Star Wars products and licenses sold to other developers as its own new efforts like Fracture failed to provide new momentum. The most notable successes of the decade – Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Star Wars: Battlefront – were developed externally, by BioWare and Pandemic Studios respectively. LucasArts’ last title to achieve major mainstream success was Star Wars: The Force Unleashed in 2008. A sequel (2010) failed to live up to expectations. The last game released by LucasArts was Kinect Star Wars, released last year for the Xbox 360, which was panned by most critics.
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