author: Mathias Zulpo
Star Wars: Galaxy in Turmoil finds itself in turmoil
Star Wars: Galaxy in Turmoil will lose its ‘Star Wars’ component and become a fully independent IP, as Lucasfilms requested that the developer has the production of the title halted.
Galaxy in Turmoil, a promising Star Wars Battlefront free-to-play reboot that appeared on Steam in June, isn’t going to be released as a Star Wars-related title; Lucasfilms has taken legal action against the usage of the franchise in the project. However, Frontwire Studios – the Galaxy in Turmoil devs – won’t just let hundreds of hours of work (including creating every asset that would appear in the game from scratch) go to waste; rather than that, they are simply going to release the game as a completely new IP, one that’s not linked to Star Wars in any way.
What is all the fuss about? Legal issues. Neither Electronic Arts nor Lucasfilms were aware that their franchise was used in Frontwire Studios’ project. Then EA became anxious about “the possibility of Galaxy in Turmoil taking away attention from their Battlefront franchise”. And since Fair Use was not in play, it should come as no surprise that a bunch of Lucasfilms officials visited Romanelli, the studio’s CEO, and demanded that his team create a non-related game that doesn’t rely on Star Wars’ popularity.
But even after the discussion has reached its conclusion, Frontwire is not just going to give up, leaving 30,000 of their fans high and dry. The devs announced that they will continue working on Galaxy in Turmoil, release a closed beta sometime in the future, and launch a crowdfunding campaign. They don’t ask you to donate just yet, though. “We have decided that we will not crowdfund until we can release a fully playable demo consisting of a single player mission & at least two multiplayer maps with a single gamemode”, the devs say. “Too often have we seen video game projects crowdfund, make a boat load of cash and then die out leaving the community empty-handed. We refuse to be another statistic”. The future – if a little uncertain – still seems promising enough to hope that Galaxy in Turmoil won’t just end up a dud.
