LucasArts shut down

[Sharp]

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.

Publicly, Disney is saying their current games could be licensed out to a different publisher or developer, but according to our source, that's unlikely. Our source says Lucas has pursued the option for "one or both games," but nothing happened. "With the teams now basically being dispersed I think both games are effectively dead forever," our source said.

A second source also told Kotaku this afternoon that the chances of Lucas licensing out 1313 are very slim. The odds are "effectively zero," the source said.

“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. In February, we started hearing rumors that the studio might be shuttered. Today, it's official: the iconic development house is gone.

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 Double Fine's Tim Schafer, 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.

[Penguin]

Thanks for the RSS feed.

[Sharp]

Thanks for the RSS feed.

It's okay <3

[Hasero]

Im speechless, first thing im doing when im in Disneyland is murder Mickey mouse with a lightsaber.

[Irony]

What the fuck Disney.

[Sunny]

I'm not capable of showing expressions in this case, it's like Goofy is raping little Ewoks...

[Skcorn]

Im speechless, first thing im doing when im in Disneyland is murder Mickey mouse with a lightsaber.

I`m in !!!!!!!! Leave Donald for me !!!!!!!!!

[krauser]

What a waste of money...

[Barcode]

What the fuck Disney.

This is the topic you choose to post on?

This is a shame but it was always going to happen, ever since Starwars rights were sold to Disney & as we all know they like to be in control of their projects, that was basically goodbye LucasArts, since they only really pushed the Starwars franchise.

[Drift]

Star Wars 7 is coming out at least.

[Hasero]

[Drift]

Can't believe you are all panting that picture of Disney movies. Ever watched Pirates of the Caribbean? Not once did they ever "break out into song" and its still a successful set of movies with Johnny Depp. Now if you think about it in that essence, why on earth would the next set of movies be Mickey Mouse and Goofy (my childhood heroes) with lightsabers. Seriously lets think this through.

[Hasero]

I know, this video is just a spoof man. Dont take it so seriously!

Disney produced alot of good films inclusing PotC, i also liked John Carter.

Next to that the director J.J. Abrams always does the trick, look at super 8/star trek and more of his movies. Wich are in my opinion awesome.

This still doesnt take away that the Disney corporation is being a total female dog for shutting down one of the best game developpers for me, a die hard star wars fan.

[Infinitii]

Hey there's still a chance the Star Wars world will be introduced to future kingdom hearts games :D
Still a shame tho

[Ironhide]

Well they barely produced any good game during the last 10 years (except SWRC of course!111). Force Unleashed? Fun to play once, but a pretty bad game compared to the old Lucas Arts classics such as Monkey Island, Jedi Knight or X Wing.

Knights of the old republic wasnt created by LucasArts. Neither has been any of the Battlefront games or Empire at War, which was decent imo.

Of course its sad to see LucasArst being closed, but I can actually understand why Disney made that decision. What I don't understand however is why they dont let them finish SW1313 first, which has been announced quite a while ago and looks awesome. One of the previous LucasArts managers already said that the current version of the game might be sold and finished by a different developer though.

Disney is still going to sell Star Wars licenses for video games, and since the last few good SW games were not made by LucasArts, we will barely see any difference to how its been during the past few years.

Bottom line: Not all games published by LucasArts were made by LucasArts. And we will still get Star Wars games in the future. Not any remarkable difference.