EA's big open-world Star Wars game sounds like it got canceled.

That's according to Kotaku. It's weird that Star Wars as a property doesn't seem to be able to find traction with a lot of their games as of late, but I'm sure having Disney involved probably makes it more difficult to get things approved by all the stakeholders but it's still a little weird that these things keep getting canceled.

Electronic Arts has canceled its open-world Star Wars game, according to three people familiar with goings-on at the company. The game, announced alongside the shutdown of Visceral Games back in 2017, had been in development at EA’s large office in Vancouver.

EA Vancouver, a large studio that mostly handles support for a variety of the publisher’s games including FIFA and Battlefront, had been working on this open-world Star Wars game since October 2017, when EA closed Visceral Games. Until then, Visceral—best known for its popular Dead Space horror series—was developing its own Star Wars game. That project, code-named Ragtag, was a linear action-adventure game directed byUncharted director Amy Hennig. EA Vancouver had been assisting on the project, and when EA closed Visceral Games on October 17, 2017, the Vancouver studio took it over.

The fact that I can't really think of the last Star Wars game that I really enjoyed is a bit surprising. Force Unleashed? Republic Commando? I had a decent time with KOTOR, I guess.

With all of these games getting canceled, and the size of the IP/the inevitability of a game at SOME point....I am EXTREMELY curious to see what that one game ends up being.

I am almost certain Disney wants a game out, it's just a matter of when and what it will be. Or they're just going to ride the already released games that are still making money(SWOTR and Galaxy of Heroes).

Disney is probably even harsher these days after the Battlefront II debacle. It takes effort to get multiple national governments investigating the monetization practices of a game set in the most lucrative franchise ever.

What a mess. All that time and effort wasted. Surely another reason for Disney to bin off EA? All they've done with the Star Wars license is Battlefront and the controversy that brought.

Make another Yoda Stories and print that lettuce.

Maybe Disney will rethink their exclusivity deal with EA and open things up. Or, they'll just quit bothering with AAA game development, and stick to mobile for any future Star Wars video games.

Luckily we'll always have this.

I know games take a long time to make, especially large AAA games, but it seems kind of crazy that the only 2 non-mobile games to come out of the EA/Disney deal so far are the two Battlefront games. We've had 4 movies come out since the deal and their representation in games largely amounts too a map or two added into the Battlefront games after a while. Compare that to the early 2000s when we got a bunch of prequel era themed games a long with a wide variety of great EU games.

EA just seems to be a bit of a garbage fire.

Fucking hell we're never getting a good singleplayer Star Wars game are we?

Edit: Oh my god their reason for cancelling it was that it would take too long? That's how you make good games you fuckwits. Disney needs to end this EA deal ASAP.

There are a bunch of legitimate reasons to cancel a project, but doing so in order to fart out some other game in 18 months seems fucking dumb. What is with Andrew Wilson?

I imagine the people at EA are constantly looking at what's hot at twitch.tv and getting really frustrated that whenever they spot a trend, a new one appears during development.

`People love uncharted, let's make one of those! ' Oh.. they like open world games now. Let's make that! Oh.. Now they like livegames & battle royales. Why are we making a singleplayer open world game?!`

What a bummer. I've been binge watching Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and it's really put me in a mood to play a Star Wars game. I did go looking for one, but there hasn't been a Star Wars game for me since The Force Unleashed in 2008. I didn't play The Force Unleashed II for whatever reason. I did recently play the first few hours of The Old Republic and that seems pretty neat, but I can't start a lengthy RPG a month before the Anthem/Division 2 one-two punch is released.

At least there's still Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order? Whatever that is at this point.

And I would have bought it! Stupid stupid, EA! What? They think everyone wants to play some battle royale game?! Geez...

Extremely disappointing. Star Wars 1313 got canceled, and now this.

I guess I'll still have Galaxy of Heroes, but I want a good single player Star Wars game. Battlefront 2 wasn't it. I'm currently playing through that campaign (it was $8 on the PS store). It's so bad. Like legitimately the worst AAA game I've played in years.

Star Wars games of late have been paid DLC trashfires. So, saying these game don't get traction would seem NOT to be the properties or even the public's fault. Once gain EA is staying, "Well, we cannot milk this property for every last cent everyone owns. So, it not really worth our time to just make a sizable profit...we will ONLY make Star Wars games if we can make all the money ever....we want Fortnight money on top of World of Warcraft money, that is then balanced on top of Pokemon GO money.

Oh, I'm sure Dinsey is sticking their thumbs in this too, but really the only thing stopping a profitable gaming from coming out under a Star Wars license is greed by all parties involved.

Man, I really hope Respawn's Star Wars game is good now. It's the only Star Wars game in the foreseeable future.

@onemanarmyy said:

I can totally see this at EA headquarters. Unfortunately, I guess they missed God of War on Twitch showing that story games do still work.

Next up Epic buy's the star wars license and only makes fortnite skins with it.

That's too bad. Heaven forbid they do anything original in a huge universe like that. I'm sure whatever Battlefront Star Wars 3 ends up being, it'll just be another recycle of Star Wars "Greatest Hits," but with bits from the most recent movies added in.

It's not like Disney is blameless in this either. It's a bad sign that the best thing to come out of their stewardship of the Star Wars franchise is the Emo Kylo Ren Twitter account. Their monomaniacal dedication to eliminating anything Extended Universeinteresting from that universe probably leaves pretty limited options for what games are allowed to do story-wise.

I would have liked to see what this property would have ended up being, especially it being a huge fan of Visceral games (sans Dead Space 3). Cancellations like this leads me to believe that the argument about AAA studios might be starting to dwindle more from publishers like EA.

Good. Maybe Star Wars can be given to another company that actually cares about the property other than making a profit.

@mrgreenman: I think EA has at least 5 more years before their deal expires so buckle up.

@hayt said:

At this point no one would be surprised if Disney terminates it early

@omgfather: We can only hope

That's enough time to make a soccer game starring Disney characters.

@shindig: Can't wait for the Hazard Star Wars skin pack.

Take the license away from these idiots, please.

No, we need footage of Donald Duck posing with his card or Mickey Mouse being livid at his rating.

@bane: I was going to mention Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in pretty much the same way. Not much info out on that one at this point. With Respawn as the developer, it is likely a linear action-adventure game rather than some open world/galaxy/universe. The EA website says "Holiday 2019", so my guess is it will be pushed to Q1 2020.

Boy I miss Lucasarts