A fan remake of the never-released Star Wars: Battlefront 3 is changing course after a cease and desist from Lucasfilm and EA.
First shown off earlier this year, fan-made project Star Wars: Galaxy in Turmoil planned to make the Star Wars: Battlefront 3 that everyone wanted but was never released. Of course, since they were making a Star Wars game, it was almost inevitable that a cease and desist would be forthcoming, and now the project has been force to change direction after receiving one from Lucasfilm.
In a lengthy post on the project’s official website, Frontwire Studios President Tony Romanelli announced the news. It turns out that the studio actually received the C&D letter back in June, and have been working since to try and negotiate a way for the project to continue.
After meeting with Lucasfilm and proposing a number of options for the project to continue, Romanelli says that “Lucasfilm had already spoken with EA about Galaxy in Turmoil and that EA expressed no desire in letting our project continue. Their main concern was due to the possibility of Galaxy in Turmoil taking away attention from their Battlefront franchise.”
Although Romanelli had previously said that he felt Galaxy in Turmoil would fall under fair use, he said in his post yesterday that he had, “No desire to get into any type of legal battle with Lucasfilm, and lose due to the sheer amount of money Lucasfilm has.”
Rather than let this (admittedly large) setback scrap the entire project, Galaxy in Turmoil will go forward as a new IP. Romanelli wrote that “Our game will still have massive 64-player battles, ground-to-space combat, destructible capital ships, and a full single-player campaign. We will also still be releasing Galaxy in Turmoil on Steam as planned and it will remain a free game.”
Frontwire has already secured a publishing agreement with Steam, and it plans to fund the game’s development through crowdfunding, although Romanelli did express his desire to not end up as another crowdfunding failure. “We refuse to be another statistic,” he said. “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.” He also eschewed the idea of microtransactions, saying, “We will not be adding any micro transactions or pay-to-win content.”
Since the Star Wars content isn’t going to be used, the studio released a few work-in-progress items that you can see below.
If you’re interested in learning more about Galaxy in Turmoil, you can find plenty of info on the game’s official site.
