Typical corporate bullshit: buy a company, gut it of "costs" (you know...the people working there who made it profitable and enticing enough for Disney to buy in the first place) and then after removing everything of value....PROFIT!
This comes after weeks and months of rumors involving the studio, which was acquired by Disney last fall. In September, LucasArts put a freeze on all hiring and product announcements, which many staff saw as the beginning of the end. Today, it's official: the long-running studio is no more.
Seriously...the circumstances of this Disney buyout of the Star Wars brand reads almost exactly like LucasArts was instead taken over by a corporate raider. I hope you consumer whores love your upcoming Star Trek-flavored Star Wars movies....you fucking worthless hacks.
Good thing I took MKJ's advice a few years back and didn't move to Singapore.
holy shit for a minute there I thought this was satire.
why cancel 1313? It was announced not too long ago.
fuck, this genuinely makes me tear up. just seeing the LucasArts logo bring back waves of nostalgic fun.
Obviously Disney doesn't want to be a big player in the video game industry (which is fine, movies is their core business afterall), so it makes sense in that respect. You'd think they would auction off the IPs tho.
like Donny said, now those old IPs are free and could land a new home. Much like Sam&Max all those years ago.
Less clear is what will happen to LucasArts' well-remembered, classic non-Star Wars adventure games. If we had to guess, we'd suspect these titles will languish in rights limbo as Disney neglects to develop them or license them out to interested parties.
Lucasfilm has long had a strategy of sharing technical resources and staff among visual effects, animation and games. But with production finished on the “Clone Wars” animated series and the next Star Wars animated series not yet in production, and the closing of LucasArts, a portion of its staff was left working only for ILM’s vfx business.
“It’s impossible for ILM to absorb all of those resources,” said a Lucasfilm spokesperson, “so with this change came the necessity for ILM to align itself and take responsibility for its own resources.” The company would not disclose the number of staffers who are being let go, but the group includes IT staffers and support staff.
The really hilarious thing in all this is that Disney has spent $4 billion on purchasing the entirety of the franchise, yet take large chunks of that $4 billion value and let it rot on the curb. I mean...the exact reason the franchise was valued at $4 billion was because of all of the various "products" pumped out by the franchise.
By letting shit rot and throwing it to the curb they're devaluing the entire product line they bought. That's like buying the Coca-Cola corporation and shutting down the production and sale of Coca-Cola...it only makes sense to accountants.
I have no doubt whatsoever that the day will come when Disney, in an effort to find more profits, will finally allow all aspects of the franchise to make money for them. In the meantime fuck you...
It appears the movie rights were all they were interested in.
Obviously Disney is as fucking stupid as Microsoft in overpaying for IP. The cynic in me thinks this is simply a nice, cheap and wholly dishonest way to overvalue your stock price.
If I thought the stock market was a good idea, I'd begin shorting Disney stock like crazy....at least until the Star Wars movie comes out.
, they kept going cos the 'Brand' is still popular ?. Last I seen it was just the Marketing side that was taken over by Micky ?
