Following their recent acquisition of Lucasfilm, Disney announced this week that they will be closing the company’s video game division, LucasArts. Rather than producing games in-house, Disney will now instead be licensing the Star Wars properties, among others, to third-party game developers.
In a statement, Disney explained:
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. 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.
LucasArts has been responsible for a variety of both Star Wars and other video games over the years, with their most recent video game being Kinect Star Wars. The company was currently developing the new game Star Wars 1313, a “mature” action game following a bounty hunter that drew positive feedback from those able to preview the game in its development. The status of the game is currently unclear, as Disney is now looking into other options for its release.
