Fanmade Star Wars: Battlefront III Game Halted By Lucasfilm
By Elaine Tveit
Development of the abandoned Star Wars: Battlefront III game by Frontwire Studios has been halted per Lucasfilm’s request.
A few months ago, a build for EA’s abandoned Star Wars: Battlefront III game was briefly made available for download for free by a user on Reddit. Later, Frontwire Studios announced it was continuing development of the game, renamed Galaxy in Turmoil, which would eventually be made free to download on Steam.
Yesterday, however, Frontwire announced it had received a cease and desist order from Lucasfilm to halt any further use of the Star Wars intellectual property. Development on Galaxy in Turmoil has now completely stopped (via PC Gamer).
In a recent blog post, Frontwire explained the situation to fans.
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"On Wednesday June 22, 2016, we received a letter from Lucasfilm requesting that we halt production of Galaxy in Turmoil with any Star Wars related IP at once. Rather than laying down at the first sign of trouble, I requested a meeting with the Lucasfilm executives to discuss our project and to find some common ground to work with. Honestly, I didn’t expect too much negotiation to occur. But much to my surprise, executives at the top of Lucasfilm agreed to meet. A week later, that meeting took place.LucasFilm informed me that although they would of 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."
While Frontwire expressed disappointment at not being able to reach a deal with EA, they hold no grudges against Lucasfilm and are hopeful for a future of original game ideas, away from the Star Wars IP. They are already planning a game inspired by the original Battlefront, as Lucasfilm said it had no problems with Frontwire taking cues from its gameplay as long as the Star Wars IP was not involved.
Galaxy in Turmoil
Concept Art, via Frontwire Studios
Galaxy in Turmoil
Concept Art, via Frontwire Studios
I’m sure many fans were looking forward to Battlefront III, given the widespread disappointment with the limitations of EA’s latest Battlefront offering. If it’s any consolation, Galaxy of Turmoil will still be available to download for free on Steam; it just won’t contain any official Star Wars material.
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Frontwire uploaded several images of concept art created for their Star Wars game on their website, a few of which we included above. Click the link here and scroll to the bottom of the page to see the rest of the images.