EA Cancels Open-World Star Wars And Fans Are Pissed

By Austin Wilson | @TheAustinPost1

Electronic Arts has, once again, pissed off the
gaming community.This time by cancelling the
very anticipated open-world Star Wars game that
was being developed by EA Vancouver.

The game was originally announced as a single
player game being developed by Dead Space
creators, Visceral studio, under the name project
Ragtag, which was described Star Wars meets
Uncharted. However, after the developer was
shut down by EA in October 2017, Ragtag was
transferred to EA Vancouver who renamed it Orca
and remodeled it as an open-world game that would
be better suited for the publishers ‘games as service’
model. EA was most likely planning to do to Orca
what they envisioned for Star Wars: Battlefront 2
and turn the game into a Star Wars themed online
casino.

After being silent on Orca for over a year, EA
announced it is cancelling the project. Kotaku’s
Jason Schreier reported that EA, “cancelled Orca in
favor of a smaller-scale Star Wars project Star Wars
project that’s now aimed for much sooner- likely late
2020, which also happens to be around the time that
I’ve heard next-gen consoles will launch.”

EA had project orca scrapped so that they could
create another Star Wars game which will likely
be lower quality and carry micro transactions.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson took over Electronic Arts
in 2013,just after his predecessor John Riccitiello
struck a deal with Disney for a ten exclusive license
to make Star Wars games. Wilson has been vocal on
his desire to focus EA’s attention on properties the
publisher owns. Jason Schreier reported “When it
uses Frostbite, EA doesn’t have to pay licensing fees
or deal with technical support at a competing
engine-maker like Epic.”

Gamers and Star Wars fans believe that EA receiving
the exclusive rights to create Star Wars video games
was one of the worst business decisions Disney has
made and it seems EA is obsessed with proving them
right.

Twitter user Erik Woolsey posted a tweet comparing
the Star Wars games produced by LucasArts between
2002-2006 and games produced by EA from
2013-2017. Since obtaining the exclusive license, EA
has only published two Star Wars games within the
past four years, with each game receiving below
average ratings from the gaming community.

The gaming community is frustrated with EA and
has been calling for Disney to strip the publisher of
it's license and give it to another publisher or
multiple indie developers. Unfortunately, the
agreement between Electronic Arts and Disney is a
ten year contract, which expires in 2023.

We can only hope that the agreement has some kind
of loophole that gives Disney the potential to take
the license away before EA can continue to tarnish
the good name of Star Wars for another five years.