Disney’s long-standing Star Wars games exclusivity has just ended



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  • Since 2013, Electronic Arts, maker of “Madden” and “FIFA”, has held the exclusive rights to create “Star Wars” games, under an agreement with Disney.
  • The deal officially ended on Wednesday with the announcement of a new “Star Wars” game made in partnership with “Assassin’s Creed” maker Ubisoft.
  • “EA has been and will continue to be a very strategic and important partner to us now and into the future,” Disney Senior Vice President of Games Sean Shoptaw told Wired. “We felt there was room for the others.”
  • Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.

Since 2013, only one game publisher has owned the rights to create games based on the “Star Wars” license: Electronic Arts, the creators of “FIFA”, “Madden” and the “Battlefield” series.

On Wednesday, this exclusive deal finally ended with the announcement of a new “Star Wars” game from “Assassin’s Creed” manufacturer Ubisoft.

Described as an “all-new, story-driven, open-world” Star Wars “adventure, the game is produced by Ubisoft studio Massive, which last produced” The Division 2 “in 2019.

It’s unlikely to be the only “Star Wars” game project in production, including an expected sequel to “Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order” from EA’s Respawn Entertainment. Despite the end of the exclusivity deal, a Disney executive told Wired he had no plans to end his relationship with EA.

“EA has been and will continue to be a very strategic and important partner to us now and into the future,” Disney Senior Vice President of Games Sean Shoptaw told Wired. “We felt there was room for others.”

The announcement of a new “Star Wars” game from Disney – the first with a new playmate in eight years – came the same week the entertainment giant revealed another collaboration: a brand new game based on ” Indiana Jones “, with a new story outside of filmography, produced by Bethesda, owned by Microsoft, and its MachineGames subsidiary.

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Both projects represent a renewed push in video games from Disney’s Lucasfilm Group, which also announced a big rebranding earlier this week.

“Lucasfilm Games is now the official identity for all Lucasfilm game titles, a name that encompasses the company’s rich catalog of video games and its look to the future,” the company said in a blog post. . To this end, Lucasfilm Games produces games based on “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” which are “developed in collaboration with top studios across the world. [game] industry, ”he said in the post.

Although Disney has a long history of television and film production, the company has a difficult history with video game production and withdrew from the production side of the video game business squarely in 2016.

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