EA shuts down Visceral Games, Star Wars project moves to EA Worldwide and EA Vancouver

EA just posted an update on Visceral Games and the Star Wars project from them.

Patrick Söderlund has a letter addressed to everyone with the announcement that you can read here. This discusses the Star Wars project and the ad news of Visceral Games being shut down. Visceral developed quite a few titles since its inception in 1998. These include Dead Space, Battlefield: Hardline, and more. Some important bits of the letter are below:

Our Visceral studio has been developing an action-adventure title set in the Star Wars universe. In its current form, it was shaping up to be a story-based, linear adventure game. Throughout the development process, we have been testing the game concept with players, listening to the feedback about what and how they want to play, and closely tracking fundamental shifts in the marketplace. It has become clear that to deliver an experience that players will want to come back to and enjoy for a long time to come, we needed to pivot the design. We will maintain the stunning visuals, authenticity in the Star Wars universe, and focus on bringing a Star Wars story to life. Importantly, we are shifting the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency, leaning into the capabilities of our Frostbite engine and reimagining central elements of the game to give players a Star Wars adventure of greater depth and breadth to explore.

This move leads to a few other changes:

A development team from across EA Worldwide Studios will take over development of this game, led by a team from EA Vancouver that has already been working on the project. Our Visceral studio will be ramping down and closing, and we’re in the midst of shifting as many of the team as possible to other projects and teams at EA.

They will announce a time frame for the release in the future.