Should EA retain the Star Wars license?

So, with Battlefront 2 out proper, a lot of noise is being generated regarding the current state of the Star Wars video game license and its position with EA.

Now, as a little synopsis, EA signed an exclusive contract with Disney back in 2013 that gave them the Star Wars license until 2023, with new games and continued support for The Old Republic.

During that time, we've received expansions for The Old Republic, several mobile titles, and the two Battlefront games, which have seen somewhat lackluster receptions.

Recently, various issues arising from the company and its handling of the license have brought question to EA's holding of the license. Starting with the Visceral Games project being put on hiatus and leading to the more recent Battlefront II Lootcrate issues, many fans are looking to DIsney to have their license revoked. A recent petition has garnered nearly 100k signatures.

What does everyone think about this? Should EA retain the license, should it be revoked, or should some sort of compromise be reached?

 

It should be revoked outright. A compromise, at this point, would be entirely ineffectual because Electronic Arts has been doing these kinds of predatory business practices for years and only a failure like getting a prominent license torn away will have any real positive effect.

 

Disney and LFL should have never given them the license in the first place. You give the guys named the worst company in America two years in a row one of your biggest IP's and act shocked when they do something controversial with said IP?

 

I'd like to see what Bethesda could do in terms of a Star Wars game...

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Get rid of them. It was a massive mistake to shrink LucasArts to under 10 employees and give EA so much power. I don't think any other big publisher is worthy of Star Wars, but who knows what's next.

 

Saw this on my Facebook feed, very true

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No company should have an exclusive license. Different companies should be allowed to develop Star Wars games at the same time.

 

Agreed. Personally, I think Lucasfilm should vett companies and projects, then act as quality control and ensure a smooth continuity.

 

After I read this (thanks for these truly informative links) -

At EA, however, things were different. “[Amy Hennig] was giving these massive presentations on the story, themes,” said one person who worked on Ragtag. “EA executives are like, ‘FIFA Ultimate Team makes a billion dollars a year.’ Where’s your version of that?” -

I couldn't cast a vote other than "No!"

 

I have no problem with EA having the license. I do have a problem with them having exclusivity over it.

 

God no

These sentiments entirely

Though quite frankly, as more of a personal opinion, after EA's shown what its idea of a fun SW game is, I really don't want them on it. Or anything, really

 

EA is complete garbage!

 

I admit to enjoying Galaxy of Heroes, particularly with recent added game modes and QOL tweaks. There are obviously ways to waste enormous amounts of cash if you're dead set on being #1 and chasing the latest "meta" team build every patch, because that's competitive phone games for you, but I'm content to be moderately above average (about #190-250 on my server) and it's been ages since I spent money. I probably could have avoided spending even once, but I was impatient to unlock Plo for my Jedi team and wanted the energy refreshes.

Anyway. My point is, from the sound of it BF2 was a terribly botched attempt to hybridize the "free to play, $$ for added convenience/saving time/RNG nonsense/maybe cosmetics/etc." model of MMOs and phone games with the traditional buy to play game model. Certainly a bad idea and a lot of people involved with this specific game done messed up, but I don't know that other teams working on other games should be shut down just to further punish BF2 and whichever executives told them to do it.

Is it actually exclusive though? They don't seem to be involved with Force Arena, I'm not sure what's going on there.

 

It is. The only other person making any Star Wars games is Disney interactive.

 

Ah, okay. I dug a little deeper and the Force Arena company does tie in to Disney Interactive. Explains that.

 

I still have Star Wars Knight of the Old Republic on CD.Was going to buy a PS4 for Battlefront 2+ seeing as i had the OG one on PS2 and such but,um,uh no,just no.

 

No EA shouldn't have exclusive rights. They can keep their AAA games.... but Disney and Lucasfilm should rebuild LucasArts into a publisher of cheaper AA niche games made by smaller developers.
Go back to the Adventure games, get the old LucasArts guys at Telltale games back to work on something. Get a developer like Larian Games to take KotOR back to its RPG roots with a Star Wars version of Divinity: Original Sin 2.
Star Wars games don't have to be ridiculously expensive big budget AAA games. I want to see a Star Wars version of Hellblade.

 

I wouldn't mind that they had it if they also let other people have it as well. One game a year that's a shooter isn't my cup of tea.

 

Obsidian would be a better alternative than EA. Bethesda would be great as a publisher, they own some good developers and something from id or MachineGames has potential. Even a Dynasty Warriors-style game would be worth playing.

 

Accidental Double Post

Obsidian would be a better alternative than EA. Bethesda would be great as a publisher, they own some good developers and something from id or MachineGames has potential. Even a Dynasty Warriors-style game would be worth playing.

 

EA may have current issues, which it does but the buck stops at Lucasfilm/Disney. The idea of telling big stories through video games was more a the era of George Lucas thing than Disney. Remember Disney/Lucasfilm canceled many Star Wars titles(some in various stages of development) that apparently did not fit Kennedy-Lucasfilm's ideas for Star Wars. I don't really want to blame EA 100% since a lot of problems are coming from the new leadership of Lucasfilm. Disney is more vested in making movies, heck even Rebels was done on a much smaller budget than TCW was. But also TCW was more a Lucas storytelling platform as he was vested a lot in animation.

 

There are a few issues with what you have here.

1. Lucasarts canceled more games than Disney/Lucasfilm have. Jedi Knight 3, KOTOR 3, Battlefront 3, Galaxies, Imperial Rogue Squadron, Chewbacca Bounty Hunter game, Imperial Commando, etc.

2. The games that were canceled seemed to be due to the dissolution or Lucasarts and not any specific issues with the game itself. If you have any evidence to the contrary, feel free to bring it up.

3. What are these other management issues you're referencing?

4. I'd like to also bring up how it was Disney/Lucasfilm that put their foot down on micro-transactions in Battlefront 2. Whether they were aware of the system/able to do something before they did is debatable, but its a positive that it happened regardless.

 

It was Disney that shut down Lucasarts and is in a partnership/contract with EA.

EA still have to follow Lucasfilm's rules so to make sure what they produce is aligned with their canon and edicts.

[/quote]During the development of Star Wars: Battlefront II (read our review), developer DICE began work on a mode that played like Overwatch and featured a similar business model to Blizzard’s team-based hero shooter, according to sources familiar with the production (who asked that I not print their names or titles to protect their employment). The mode would have focused on teamwork and squad composition, and — more importantly — it would have favored cosmetic items like hero costumes in its loot boxes over perks and weapons. Most of these ideas were dropped from Battlefront II due, at least in part, to a request from Disney’s Star Wars division Lucasfilm.[/quote]

https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/17/...most-had-way-more-overwatch-style-hero-skins/

https://www.polygon.com/2017/11/28/...efront-2-cosmetics-loot-boxes-lucasfilm-canon

Disney also canceled Star Wars 1313 And Star Wars: First Assault. It was Disney's Lucasfilm that 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". Thus the exclusive deal with EA. Red Fly tried repitching their developed Darth Maul game to Lucasfilm only to get turned down since basically EA is running the show on game development and was not interested . And recently the hyped Visceral's Star Wars game was scrapped by EA.

 

Lucasarts was a failing studio for years before the Disney takeover. Not only did they lay off major portions of their staff several times, but they went through multiple presidents in the mid to late 2000s, and lost many essential personnel to other companies. And, on top of that, they developed a reputation of screwing over their developers, like the debacle surrounding Free Radical and the cancellation of Rogue Squadron Trilogy.

Align with canon, yes. However, all we know about their relationship is that the teams at EA have to work with the Lucasfilm Story Group to ensure a consistent continuity. Anything deeper than that is baseless speculation. We can infer that, by Disney's call to EA, that Disney has some degree of control over the products they make, but it only seems to extend as far as "You're making our brand look bad, fix it." or maybe some kind of executive producer like control as determined in their license agreement. There's basically no way to know unless someone read the agreement.

The article you linked is completely un-cited. Neither company commented on the story and no source is listed for the information. It may be true, but it's totally unverified one way or the other. And, even if it is accurate, it's also incredibly vague. If Disney really did ask EA to move away from the model described, it could be due to the Overwatch rips as opposed to anything regarding monetization.

I have no idea what the point of linking this article is. It seems to be EA making excuses for having gameplay affecting loot boxes as opposed to cosmetic ones, which has been debunked by the inclusion of cosmetics in the first Battlefront game, and by the cosmetic options found within the game's code. That's on EA, not Disney/Lucasfilm.

Star Wars 1313 had been going through some rough development with the resignations of several key staff members, and reports that the game had gone through numerous revisions already. I can absolutely see it being scrapped due to financial issues, even If I wish it had come to fruition. First Assault would be rendered completely redundant with the creation of EA's Battlefront, making the entire project unnecessary. And, again, far more projects were scrapped under Lucasarts than were scrapped by Disney/Lucasfilm.

Yeah, they did. It's largely the same strategy that properties like Star Trek, Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, and most other licenses that begin as Movies or TV shows, and it's one that Lucasarts itself used extensively, like with Empire at War (Petroglyph) , Battlefront (Free Radical) , and Rogue Squadron (Factor 5). The deal with EA is the major hurdle, as the Licensing system falls apart when you don't have a diverse group of studios to license the property to.

No, they didn't. They were working on a demo to present to EA, but there has been no word on the project since.

Yeah. And that's on EA.

At best, I think Disney/Lucasfilm has a SEVERE lapse in judgement appointing EA exclusively to the license. But, from everything i've seen, it's been almost entirely EA's fault when it comes to poor quality content and shady business decisions.

 

DP