Without a doubt, Star Wars is one of the biggest licenses in the world in and outside of video games. When EA signed a 10-year Star Wars licensing deal in 2013, it seemed as if the publisher was set up for massive success. EA—with its enormous financial backing and talented development teams—would not only be able to create AAA sci-fi games under the Star Wars banner for the next decade, but it would also be able to use that 10-year period as an audition for perhaps another licensing deal after that.
However, after less than eight years, Disney (which owns Star Wars) is already over the EA experience and ready to move on. In fact, Disney and Star Wars is already looking to the future by bringing back Lucasfilm Games and announcing new projects that will seemingly be ready as soon as the 10-year EA licensing deal has expired. It is not all bad news for EA, as the publisher will still be able to work on games moving forward, but it no longer has exclusive rights to the franchise. When looking at the situation, it has been messy, confusing, and frustrating for many. There was no plethora of projects, no multitude of genres, and overall little investment (it seems) on this deal. Thus, the decision for Disney and Star Wars to pull the exclusive plug was an easy one.
Just Four Core Games in Eight Years
One big factor for removing EA's exclusivity deal with Star Wars has to do something with quantity. Since 2013, EA has published just four core Star Wars titles, starting with 2015's Star Wars: Battlefront. Later EA made a sequel to that game with Star Wars: Battlefront 2. After years of fans asking for a traditional single-player Star Wars title, EA finally released Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in 2019, developed by Respawn Entertainment. And just a few months ago, in 2020, Star Wars: Squadrons was launched as a budget title for $39.99 USD.
While four games would be fine for a single developer, EA is one of the largest publishers on the planet. EA has teams like Visceral Games, BioWare, Criterion Games, and more, as well as many studios simply under the EA name planted all over the world. One would expect—with such a big name like Star Wars—that EA would gather more of its development portfolio to start working on big Star Wars games over the years.
It is true that EA also launched a very successful mobile game called Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. Additionally, BioWare continued to support Star Wars: The Old Republic (which launched before the EA Star Wars deal was inked). Those facts certainly help EA's case in claiming that it can create and build on triumphant games with the Star Wars IP, but that is not really the point in the 10-year deal. The idea should not have been to make singular experiences, but instead to be able to create a whole-scale plan of action. If EA was capable of making singular solid games and nothing else, then Disney would not have needed to give it an exclusive contract.
The EA Star Wars Controversies
EA has long been a publisher with controversies, deserved or undeserved, but it may have never been uglier than the microtransaction disaster that was Star Wars: Battlefront 2. The game itself reviewed as a mediocre experience, but the multiplayer progression system that was built around microtransactions and a pay-to-win system was more obvious than perhaps any game before it. So much so that EA eventually took microtransactions out of the game eventually due to backlash. In the eyes of fans, this was just another reason that EA should not be handling their beloved Star Wars IP. Of course, EA has come back from this and Star Wars Battlefront 2 is a much better game today, but first impressions matter and can have a lost-lasting impact.
One of the other major controversies has to do with the canceled Star Wars projects, including reports of a Star Wars: Battlefront spinoff as well as an open-world game from EA Vancouver. Uncharted creative mind Amy Hennig's canceled Star Wars game tops the list for painful cancelations during the EA era. So many were excited to learn that she was working on a Star Wars title, which was to be a single-player campaign that was grounded and based in deep storytelling elements. New information has come out about the Visceral Games' project that only makes things more frustrating for fans. According to reports, even though production was coming along nicely, the game known as "Project Ragtag" was shut down thanks to time constraints and financial reasons. With EA being the financial powerhouse that it is, it is a tough pill to swallow knowing that an Amy Hennig-led project was shut down for these reasons.
What EA Could Have Done Differently
EA will still make Star Wars games, and while hindsight is 20/20, there are a bevy of things that it could have done differently to either maintain its Star Wars license after this 10-year period or simply to better utilize the time that it had. The formula of success could have revolved around three pillars of ongoing content: Single-player games, small scale experiences, and ongoing games as a service/multiplayer titles.
From a multiplayer and ongoing perspective, EA has the MOBA and mobile game down with Star Wars: The Old Republic and Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes respectively. With Star Wars: Battlefront 2, the microtransaction aspect really hurt EA. However, the formula is there for an ongoing game. Battlefront 2 wasn't necessarily needed, as the original Star Wars: Battlefront could have just been built on with more maps, new guns, continual updates, and more. The biggest surprise is that EA never made its own Destiny-like out of Star Wars. If ever there was an IP to copy off of the formula of Destiny, The Division, etc. it would be Star Wars. There is even a chance that Ubisoft's new open-world Star Wars game will have elements of this. If EA had developed a successful Star Wars game in the mold of Destiny, it could have been a big hit.
The other pillar to lean on for EA's success with Star Wars is single players titles: Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is a beloved game. The world of Star Wars is massive and there are so many stories that can be told from different eras and perspectives. The Visceral Games project is an example of EA perhaps giving up on a title before it had the chance to be something special, not wisely investing in the deep love for solid single-player games.
Lastly, EA could have thought outside of the box with small scale Star Wars experiences. Perhaps, handling with care, EA could have even used the EA Originals program and allowed indie teams to develop Star Wars titles, where EA would still publish the games. Off-the-wall possibilities could have included a top-down Jedi indie game in the style of Hyper Light Drifter or perhaps a short story-driven pixel-art adventure game where players control a droid in the city-planet of Coruscant. EA only made four core Star Wars games, but it seems to have had other options to give players other unique and exceptional Star Wars experiences.
The Good That Has Come Out of This
While EA perhaps has not made all of the best decisions, between canceled games and ugly microtransaction decisions, the end result seems to be very good for fans, and even EA itself. Moving forward, EA will still be able to make Star Wars games. The aforementioned Star Wars: The Old Republic and Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes will still be supported by EA (and for good reason, as they seem to be making good money for both EA and Disney). And Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 2 is still likely in the works, by all accounts. Meanwhile, it is likely that future multiplayer games will be better supported, and eventually Star Wars: Battlefront 3 (hopefully with a better-handled microtransaction system) will likely still be developed and released. Even with the hiccups, EA proved that it could release solid experiences.
From a player perspective, the fact that EA will no longer have the exclusivity rights when the 10-year deal is over means that Disney and Lucasfilms Games can handpick studios to make the best video games possible, like with Ubisoft and the open-world Star Wars game. The fact that the Ubisoft project and Lucasfims Games announcement happened now—with multiple years left on the EA deal—likely means that Disney wants to get ahead of that 10-year licensing agreement so that the moment it is over, there are already brand new Star Wars games from different developers and publishers ready to be released. More Star Wars from more teams of different genres, this is, again, a good thing for fans.