Frontwire Studios have been working on a fan-made Star Wars game called Galaxy in Turmoil, that was meant to be a spiritual successor to StarWars Battlefront. Unfortunately, the studio has received an official letter from Lucasfilm asking them to halt the project.
According to the studio’s latest blog post, they were able to contact Lucasfilm and discuss the situation with some of their executives. Tony Romanelli, President of Frontwire Studios, was told by Lucasfilm that they would have been open to negotiating licensing with them, but due to their current contract with EA, they would not be able to. Lucasfilm also made it quite clear that EA had no desire to have the project see the light of day, as it might have taken away the attention from their Battlefront franchise.
“they would have been open to the idea of negotiating a license for Frontwire to work on the Star Wars IP, that they are not able to due to their contract with Electronic Arts (EA).”
“I was told that Lucasfilm had already spoken with EA about Galaxy in Turmoil and that EA expressed no desire in letting our project continue,” Romanelli added. “Their main concern was due to the possibility of Galaxy in Turmoil taking away attention from their Battlefront franchise.”
Does this mean that Galaxy in Turmoil is dead? Romanelli had the following to say about the future of Galaxy in Turmoil,
“Going forward, Frontwire Studios will be pivoting away from Star Wars and embarking on a mission to create a new, original game in a never before seen universe. Our game will still have massive 64-player battles, ground-to-space combat, destructible capital ships, and a full single-player campaign. We will also still be releasing Galaxy in Turmoil on Steam as planned and it will remain a free game.”
It’s not surprising that EA is against other developers using the Star Wars IP as they currently have quite a few Star Wars projects in production and wouldn’t want the attention taken away from them. In a way, we can understand both EA and Lucasfilm’s point of view. We will just have to wait and see how this new non-Star Wars game will turn out.
