Steve Ellis and “Doctor” David Doak of Free Radical discussed the disparaging story of how Star Wars: Battlefront 3 never came to be.
In an article on Eurogamer, Ellis claimed that Battlefront never made it because LucasArts did not pay the studio for six months because of “grey areas” within deliverables. It is stated that Ellis firmly believes LucasArts did not want the project to happen before President Jim Ward stepped down from the publishing company. Ellis stated, “Say the contract is, ‘If publisher wants out, they have to pay X million pounds to developer.’ Well, what if they don’t? What are you going to do about it? The amount of time [court] would take was more than the money we had left.”
Of course, LucasArts had no comment regarding the accusations, but the allegations lead to questioning what action a smaller developer can take when a larger bullies it?
Doak says, “”Everyone knows all the horror stories about development. And it’s a real shame, because it turns people off it in the end. There’s this aspect open to exploitation where because it’s your dream job, doing something you really love, you should endure all kinds of abuse to do it.”
Although this kind of situation is quite terrible for those involved, programs like Kickstarter are giving developers more outlets to fund and distribute their products without having to rely on publishers for everything.
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