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Disney Closes LucasArts
An anonymous reader sends news that Disney is closing LucasArts. The game studio has been around since 1982, and brought us classics such as Labyrinth, The Secret of Monkey Island, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and Star Wars: Battlefront. They also published Star Wars: Galaxies, Knights of the Old Republic, and Star Wars: The Old Republic. The company held a meeting today informing employees of the layoffs. "In some ways, the news is not a surprise. LucasArts had seemed directionless in recent years. The company's core business of games based on the Star Wars license have been largely disappointing in both quality and sales. While the company had some success with games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and the Battlefront series, both of those franchises seemed to have died on the vine. The cancellation of Star Wars Battlefront III was particularly ugly, which led to nasty public fingerpointing between LucasArts and developer Free Radical. ... LucasArt's other big franchise, Indiana Jones, has failed to make much of a dent in games in recent years, with the exception of Traveller's Tales LEGO Indiana Jones series that, once again, was not developed by LucasArts. Meanwhile, series like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, which are both heavily influenced by the Indiana Jones films, have thrived." If only they hadn't abandoned the X-Wing series of games. I would have bought a new one of those in a heartbeat. Update: 04/04 18:09 GMT by T : Dice.com's news service (Dice.com is the corporate parent of Slashdot) mentions one small silver lining for those employees who stuck it out to the end: the best kind of parting gift. "Soon after the acquisition, a number of people departed LucasArts, deciding the time was right to head out in search of a new job. Many others remained, encouraged to hang on as long as they could by talk of generous severance packages. Sources among those laid off say the packages were, indeed, generous."
I think SW:TOR is a BioWare thing, with LucasArts just owning the IP.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Run by Bioware and EA so not affected. Probably the thing of the future instead of developing in house Disney will sell the Star Wars license to whoever wants to pay.
Which raises the question: what happens to Telltale Games? Will they be allowed to keep making games based off the old LucasArts franchises?
Plural? Their ONLY game based on a LucasArts franchise is Tales of Monkey Island. Sam & Max are owned entirely by Steve Purcell, not LucasArts, and I've yet to hear news of new Telltale releases based on Maniac Mansion, Loom, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, etc, etc...
IIRC, there's this classic Loom.
i like how you decide to cut out the big section of one of your quoted post, that reffered to Disney selling out the licenses, or disney themselves developing
ah internet~
I think Freespace 2 still has a pretty active modding community.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
or Day of the Tentacle, or Secret Weapons of hte Luftwaffe
Gamers these days.
No sense of heritage.
Here we go. the full list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LucasArts_games
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
http://nooooooooooooooo.com/
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.