EA Shuts Down Visceral
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Electronic Arts, games developer and publisher, has shut down one of its oldest studios. EA revealed earlier this morning it had closed Visceral Games, who worked on some huge titles back in the day. As well as this, the single player Star Wars game the company was working on, will be overhauled and moved to a different studio in EA’s company. The game’s future is uncertain, to say the least.
Vice President of EA, Patrick Soderlund posted to EA’s website with a statement on the closure and the future of the Star Wars title.
“In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design.”
The project will now be helmed by EA Vancouver, who had been already working on the game. The company assured us that it would ‘maintain the stunning visuals, authenticity in the Star Wars universe and focus on bringing a Star Wars story to life. Importantly, we are shifting the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency, leaning into the capabilities of our Frostbite engine and reimagining central elements of the game to give players a Star Wars adventure of greater depth and breadth to explore.’
If we break that down it sounds like they’re going to focus test the b**p out of it and end up making something more akin to a modern third-person shooter than an actual Star Wars game. It’s happened before with publishers like Raven Software who now only exclusively work on Call of Duty.
It sucks to see the publisher go, considering they made some pretty decent stuff.
Various YouTubers were vexed by this, including Jesse Cox, John Bain and Jim Sterling.
It's so sad to see such things. Dont let "market trends" dictate what you make, dictate to the market what it wants by making GOOD THINGS
— TotalBiscuit (@Totalbiscuit) October 17, 2017
It's so sad to see such things. Dont let "market trends" dictate what you make, dictate to the market what it wants by making GOOD THINGS
— TotalBiscuit (@Totalbiscuit) October 17, 2017
EA is basically a serial killer of studios. It's Dexter without a code.
— Non-Binary Finery (@JimSterling) October 17, 2017
And possibly the best response:
*LANGUAGE*
Dear @EA you are gross. You killed @VisceralGames. And now you're killing their Star Wars game by "pivoting the design with market trends" pic.twitter.com/WHLmlB1zBd
— Jesse Cox – Somehow In Cyberpunk 2077 (@JesseCox) October 17, 2017
Hopefully, the talent behind things like Dead Space and some of my favourite early Lord of the Rings games will find better jobs.