Everyone's favorite publisher and the sole rights-holder of Star Wars licensed video games, EA, is rumored to have canceled a Star Wars: Battlefront spin-off game in 2019. This should come as no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention to the publisher's questionable treatment of the most sought after licensing deal in the industry, yet it's just as disappointing as ever.
To EA's credit, the publisher did allow Apex Legends studio Respawn Entertainment to flex its creative wings in the development of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in 2019. That game raked in the cash and praise of millions of fans who had been waiting for the publisher to finally ship a quality Star Wars product, despite the fact that EA's exclusivity deal with Disney was signed back in 2013. After two disappointing Star Wars: Battlefront entries by DICE, this third-person action blockbuster is all that EA has to show for itself seven years into a ten-year contract, and the blame lies solely with the company's cancellation-happy stranglehold on its studios.
Kotaku's Jason Schreier, a leading industry insider, now reports that one more Star Wars game was tossed on the pile while no one was looking in 2019. Given the moniker "Viking" during development (much like its ill-fated brethren, Ragtag and Orca), this most recently canned project was going to be a spin-off of the Star Wars: Battlefront series according to "six people familiar with EA's inner workings." These individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals from EA, and their corroborating stories paint the picture of a fledgling game that passed hands between numerous shuttered EA studios, a tale neatly summarized in a tweet by Schreier.
Ironically, Viking turns out to have been the reason why the ambitious open-world Orca was scrapped. EA wanted to get a faster return on investment. After issues between developers, Criterion and EA Vancouver, made it clear that the project wouldn't ship at the end of the ridiculously short year-and-a-half provided, Schreier says, "Viking was canceled in the first half of 2019, although this news has gone unreported until now," as EA suits had "no interest in extending the timeline." Evidently, EA also has little interest in publishing more than one quality game this decade before Disney is given an opening to reconsider its choice of a gaming partner. It's unfair to EA's hard-working developers, but virtually anyone besides EA seems like a better choice for the Star Wars license at this point.
Whether or not Disney reevaluates its relationship with EA, this pattern of egregious cancellations outnumbering released successes should worry anyone looking forward to the alleged reboot of the Knights of the Old Republic franchise. For now, Respawn is still cooking up a Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order sequel, while EA Motive works on an unknown project. Still, it seems Star Wars: Battlefront II will be the last gamers see of the multiplayer series for quite some time.
Source: Kotaku, Jason Schreier/Twitter
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