EA Can’t Stop Cancelling Star Wars Games

“Messy” is a good word to describe EA’s handling of Star Wars through their contractual deal with Disney and Lucasfilm, one that’s nearly seven years old at this point. As it turns out, it was even messier than previously realized.

EA has released three projects within the nearly seven-year timeframe: Star Wars Battlefront, Star Wars Battlefront II (itself a mess before it became the solid product it is today), and the recent Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (a solid game that launched in a glitchy state). But it’s important to note the projects that never saw the light of day, thanks to both their disheveled development periods and internal politics. There was “Ragtag” from Visceral Games, an intriguing title helmed by Uncharted series veterans, the death of which also took down the developer. The second was title codenamed “Orca” in development at EA Vancouver, put into development shortly after Ragtag’s cancellation. It was cancelled about a year ago.

Now, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier has reported that a third game was in development that was eventually — you got it — cancelled. It was codenamed “Viking,” an open world title with a focus on story and characters intended to be a Battlefront series spinoff. Criterion was serving as its lead developer, one that expanded from solely handling racing games like the Burnout and Need for Speed series. EA Vancouver came up with the idea, but Criterion was realizing the concept. But logistical issues came into play, with a Vancouver-based studio needing to keep in constant contact with a London-based one frequently, which contributed to its cancellation.

Here’s one part I don’t get, though. Schreier, though his sources, explained that “It soon became clear that Viking would never be finished in just a year and a half, and EA’s executives had no interest in extending the timeline.” The company pulled the plug in the first half of 2019, and now the “fall 2020 financial hole will go unfilled.” This, along with the aforementioned logistics issues, don’t sound like sufficient justification to outright kill a game’s development.

Something’s missing here, like further info about how the project didn’t come together. You probably don’t need me to tell you that games get cancelled all the time thanks to the results just not turning out as well as planned, but it would be nice to know in further detail about whether something similar happened here.

If the game wouldn’t be ready by the fall 2020 financial period, there ostensibly should have been no issue with delaying it until it was ready. This was planned to be a story-based Star Wars game, a title that was bound to sell well through the name brand alone; with EA being a big company, they could have justified pushing it back for as long as they had to. There’s also a chance that Disney and Lucasfilm had bizarre demands that either EA or Criterion got sick of listening to, as Respawn Entertainment did with Jedi: Fallen Order. But again, it would be nice to know for sure.

With Jedi: Fallen Order being a good critical and massive commercial success, maybe EA has everything together enough to ensure that developments over the next few years will be smoother. But knowing EA, Disney, and Lucasfilm, I know better than to say that’s guaranteed.

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