We’ve talked before about the incredible fan project that wants to create a ‘true’ Star Wars Battlefront 3. The good news is that it’s still going strong – the bad news is that it’s had to drop the Star Wars IP.
While this won’t come as a surprise to many of us, the Battlefront 3 team Frontwire Studios announced that it has met with Lucasfilm following a cease-and-desist letter, and both parties reached an arrangement for the game, now called simply Galaxy in Turmoil.
Frontwire president Tony Romanelli wrote on his website:
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.
Romanelli revealed that he spoke with some of the biggest bosses over at Lucasfilm, and even that the Lucasfilm executives would apparently have been happy to license the Star Wars IP to Frontwire.
Unfortunately Lucasfilm is unable to lend the IP to anyone, thanks to a deal with EA, who are currently making a Star Wars game for every day of the week – Lucasfilm even spoke with EA about Galaxy in Turmoil, but the publisher wasn’t impressed.
Romanelli explained:
[EA’s] main concern was due to the possibility of Galaxy in Turmoil taking away attention from their Battlefront franchise. I tried to pitch the idea about putting Galaxy in Turmoil behind EA’s paywall, but was told that EA had previously rejected that proposition as well.
Still, Romanelli concluded that he has nothing but respect for both EA and Lucasfilm, and implored fans of Galaxy in Turmoil not to hold a grudge.
Of course, Galaxy in Turmoil only came to be in the first place because EA and DICE’s Battlefront sequel was nothing like what fans of the franchise were used to/wanted/expected, so that EA had a hand in killing this is bound to sting.
On the bright side, this isn’t the last we’ll see of Galaxy in Turmoil. Frontwire will continue to work hard, removing the Star Wars characters and creating a brand new universe in its place.
The team plan to conduct a crowdfunding campaign so that they can start fresh, but this won’t begin until after fans get a taste of the game, with ‘a fully playable demo consisting of a single-player mission and at least two multiplayer maps with a single gamemode’.
It seems that for the time being, we have to give up our dreams of ever seeing a true sequel to Star Wars Battlefront 2.
Still, Frontwire gave it a good go, and its reworked project is bound to be worth checking out – make sure you keep an eye on it.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.