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Now that EA has lost the exclusivity deal with Disney, what is gonna happen next.


Redlotusx

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The only way it will affect SWTOR is if some other studio puts out a competing MMO

 

Otherwise EA/BW still has full rights to continue with the game until they deem it no longer worth the expense.

 

^This. Other software houses can make all the single-player and even team battle royale games they want, as long as there's no MMO announced, SWTOR isn't going anywhere.

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I think, this is really really bad news. I'm on my last day of subscription and i will not renew it. I believe, we will not see the 10 year anniversary expansion anymore. It will only be a very small story update and servers will close shortly after. We always knew, that EA has a deal with Star Wars till 2022. Edited by SoontirMorillo
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Nothing bad is going to happen. SWTOR will stay on like it always had and will not be shut down anytime soon. The game is doing well, player numbers are rising (especially since the Steam release) and we had multiple hints that something big is happening behind the scenes. I have been speculating for a while now that this behind the scenes stuff is about greater funding/revitalising the game, or even about integrating the game into the Disney canon.

 

In other words: stop worrying, because there's nothing to worry about. SWTOR won't be shut down for years to come. Anyone who says otherwise is fearmongering for no reason.

Edited by Ylliarus
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I think, this is really really bad news. I'm on my last day of subscription and i will not renew it. I believe, we will not see the 10 year anniversary expansion anymore. It will only be a very small story update and servers will close shortly after. We always knew, that EA has a deal with Star Wars till 2022.

 

I'm just baffled how many people don't understand how licensing deals work. The deal betwen Disney and EA is an exclusivity deal, meaning that they give EA the license to be the only company to create new games in the Star Wars universe. That has nothing to do with the existing deal that was made for this particular game between LucasArts and EA when Disney did not hold the rights to the Star Wars property. Losing that exclusivity deal has no bearing on the existing deal for this particular game that was made before Disney got the rights to the Star Wars property.

 

As others have said, SWTOR will only shut down if it does not make enough money anymore for EA or if a new Star Wars Mmorpg comes out.

Edited by Phazonfreak
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I'm just baffled how many people don't understand how licensing deals work. The deal betwen Disney and EA is an exclusivity deal, meaning that they give EA the license to be the only company to create new games in the Star Wars universe. That has nothing to do with the existing deal that was made for this particular game between LucasArts and EA when Disney did not hold the rights to the Star Wars property. Losing that exclusivity deal has no bearing on the existing deal for this particular game that was made before Disney got the rights to the Star Wars property.

Moreover, according to the same article as I read it, Lucasfilm Games also has some deals with EA to create some SW games in the future. So it may not be exclusively EA anymore but that doesn't mean that EA stops having the right to sell SW games and make new ones. Just not exclusively and not without the say-so of Lucasfilm Games.

 

There is the situation where Ubisoft is making an open world game. This could mean many things and it could mean that it has MMO or MMO-light ambitions, but it could also be something entirely different. What could happen is that when Ubisoft is getting near completion of their game that part of the deal could affect SWTOR... just like SWTOR affected SWG.

 

But that's a lot of "ifs" and it will be years before that would even happen. There is the chance, however, that if indeed that game would compete with SWTOR, meaning it has those MMO style ambitions, that SWTOR may not survive.

 

Time will tell.

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I think, this is really really bad news. I'm on my last day of subscription and i will not renew it. I believe, we will not see the 10 year anniversary expansion anymore. It will only be a very small story update and servers will close shortly after. We always knew, that EA has a deal with Star Wars till 2022.

 

The sky is not falling, renew your sub if you want to support this game and ensure its continued development.

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Um, did EA ever have an "exclusive" deal with Disney? 🤔

 

Yes, they have. Since 2013 they were the only company that had the license to release games under the Star Wars brand.

 

Which is later than the deal that was made for Swtor and therefore not directly affected by this decision.

Edited by Phazonfreak
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What will happen next ??

 

Good question !!

 

Unlikely we'll see anything major ???

 

Again that's a good question.

 

Potential ???

 

The POTENTIAL is unquestionably there. The people who actually ... you know .. do the WORK .. they are very capable !! We've seen the good .. the bad and the ugly right here (well in game at least).

 

** New story ??

** Fun with companions ??

** Crafted armor that actually means something ??

** Loads of fun in new content ??

** New: FP's / WZ's / OPs ??

** New Strong Hold(s)

** New class (yeah ... try not to laugh too hard. Could bust a blood vessel in a critical place)

 

However, one thing most defiantly for certain:

 

BUGS !!! LOTS AND LOTS OF BUGS !!!

Edited by OlBuzzard
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Even if Ubisoft creates an mmo, SWTOR is an already established game with an established player base. SWTOR also has things that make it different from other mmo's. I can't say I've played every mmo out there, but I've played enough to say that the story element in SWTOR is much more expansive and immersive than your general mmo.

 

Other companies being able to make Star Wars games isn't a death sentence for SWTOR. May cause some bumps now and again, but it may also bring some good things. Competition can be an excellent motivator.

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If you read the article it means that they will no longer have exclusivity. Meaning they aren't renewing there exclusivity deal. The deal ends in 2023 so that means even if Ubisoft is working on a Star wars game, the soonest it would come out would be 2023 when the current exclusivity deal ends. The current contract isn't being cancelled, just that it won't be renewed.

 

Also don't forget any ideas or games that want to be made still have to go through Lucas film for approval. They can't just do or write any story they want.

Edited by Nightblazer
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I think the other thread does a much better job of explaining this.

 

TL;DR version....

 

2023 ends the exclusivity of EA developing games for the IP. It does not necessarily mean that SWTOR will be shut down in 2023. What it does mean is that other studios will be able to develop games for the IP as of 2023, with approval from Disney. The inevitable competition opens the possibility for a SWTOR vs SWG situation, where one game essentially usurps the market of the other.

 

Personally, I think this is a VERY good thing for this game. It will force EA to either dedicate more resources to making this game better toward attracting and retaining more players, or face the possibility of losing us to a competitor studio/publisher that makes an even better SWTOR 2.0 (or whatever it ends up being called). Essentially, EA can no longer afford to keep this game on the backburner while it funnels resources and revenue to other projects, assuming they want to keep this game active and profitable.

Edited by Mournblood
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The inevitable competition opens the possibility for a SWTOR vs SWG situation, where one game essentially usurps the market of the other.

 

Personally, I think this is a VERY good thing for this game. It will force EA to either dedicate more resources to making this game better toward attracting and retaining more players, or face the possibility of losing us to a competitor studio/publisher that makes an even better SWTOR 2.0 (or whatever it ends up being called). Essentially, EA can no longer afford to keep this game on the backburner while it funnels resources and revenue to other projects, assuming they want to keep this game active and profitable.

 

I always believed there was room for both SWTOR and SWG, since they were two different styles of MMORPG (themepark versus sandbox) and two different Star Wars eras (old republic versus galactic civil war.) We already know Ubisoft is working on an open world game set in an era "long requested" but that could mean anything from Sims-like to a Destiny/Anthem-like to an MMORPG. Those distinctions can help maintain revenue for SWTOR and subsequent projects.

 

There's also the consideration of different platforms. Many games can be easily ported to console, like Jedi Fallen Order or the Battlefront games. But aside from DC Universe Online and Final Fantasy 11 and 14, I'm not aware of any MMORPGs that are on Playstation, and I don't know of any PC-based MMORPGs that are on mobile devices. Opening up the development pool to different studios can allow some studios to focus on the mobile market, some on consoles, and some on PCs.

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There's also the consideration of different platforms. Many games can be easily ported to console, like Jedi Fallen Order or the Battlefront games. But aside from DC Universe Online and Final Fantasy 11 and 14, I'm not aware of any MMORPGs that are on Playstation, and I don't know of any PC-based MMORPGs that are on mobile devices. Opening up the development pool to different studios can allow some studios to focus on the mobile market, some on consoles, and some on PCs.

 

There's several on XBox, such as ESO, STO, Neverwinter, ED, NMS, and hopefully more to come. But to your point, maybe other studios will develop for other platforms thereby leaving SWTOR uncontested, but if it was my decision to make for my studio, I'd make a Star Wars MMO that was cross-platform and put SWTOR out of business so that I had no other competition for that market space. I'd also make sure I took the time to learn from the mistakes made by Bioware so that I didn't make the same mistakes, and I'd keep whatever aspects were working and incorporate those concepts into my game. But that's just me.

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I'm not sure why people jump to the conclusion that the issue was SWG and SWTOR were going to crowd each other out.

 

Raph Koster, the creative director behind SWG, has a pretty great article/postmortem on the game called Did Star Wars Galaxies Fail? (https://www.raphkoster.com/2015/04/27/did-star-wars-galaxies-fail/)

 

By Koster's own admission, though the game had decent success over the entire course of its life, a series of errors damaged the game to a point it became unviable:

 

The game wasn’t doing as badly as people seem to think. It didn’t fail in the market. It did just fine, even by the standards pre-WoW. But there were huge expectations that we didn’t push against, it launched with serious problems, and the team wasn’t really equipped to fix them. This resulted in a series of errors that damaged the game’s ongoing viability, which resulted in more hurried changes...

 

Plenty of the choices made, or the omissions, were my decision; in that sense, SWG didn’t fail. I failed it.

 

He was supposed to have a post-mortem at GDC last year, actually, about SWG, but it seems to not have happened due to COVID.

 

Anyway, to the point:

 

SWG was old, outdated, relatively unpopular, and had a dwindling playerbase significantly smaller than SWTOR at its lowest point.

Edited by jedimasterjac
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  • 1 month later...

Developers seem to not be in a rush to create this old style of MMORPGs. It's not worth the investment. So unless something else happens this game should be safe.

 

Only WoW remains kinda what developers want out of their mmos, and even it is a shadow of its former self. MMORPGs these days are not that popular, they are more of a niche thing.

Edited by Kaedusz
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