The announcement of Visceral Game’s closure came less than two weeks ago, but one of the first things we found out about the closure is what happened to the single player Star Wars game. While EA fluffed it up a bit with PR speak, the game appears to be effectively cancelled. Today, Kotaku has released an intensive investigative piece on Visceral and their Star Wars title, and it’s a great read.
Here’s just a snippet from the article:
In the weeks leading up to the studio?s closure, the staff of Visceral Games had crunched hard, working long hours to make a demo for Ragtag that they hoped might impress EA. Alongside the Canada-based studio EA Vancouver, Visceral?s employees made a set of high-octane demos in which Ragtag?s main characters would get chased by an AT-ST walker, get into a shootout on the desert planet Tatooine, and embark on a rescue mission within the dungeons of Jabba?s palace. One person who worked on the game described these demos as a ?sampler platter,? something that would show EA?s executives what Visceral?s vision of Uncharted Star Wars could become. The demos weren?t enough. Former Visceral employees don?t know when EA made the decision to shut down their studio, but on October 17, 2017, it became official. Visceral, which employed around 80 people, was no more. Staff say they were given three weeks to put together portfolios and look for other employment, both in and outside of EA.
There is a lot more to read at the Kotaku ...