14 DAY TRIAL // Star Wars Galaxies, the long-running online game based on the popular movie series, is set to be shut down later this year, so its administrator, Sony Online Entertainment, revealed some of the causes of this move, blaming it partly on the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO from BioWare.
Online role-playing games are a dime a dozen these days, but few manage to command such a loyal following like Star Wars Galaxies, largely because of its use of the Star Wars license, which was developed by Sony Online Entertainment as part of an agreement with LucasArts, its owner.
Now, after many years, the game is set to be shut down, with SOE announcing last month that its servers will go offline this December.
The company has now detailed some of the reasons for this move, with CEO John Smedley explaining to users just why the decision was made.
"It was time to turn it off," said Smedley, via The Escapist. "We have a contractual relationship that's ending in 2012, The Old Republic launching, a bunch of other business things with LucasArts."
The SOE executive admitted that the upcoming launch of Star Wars: The Old Republic would've left Galaxies without many users, so it just wasn't all that feasible to keep it running.
"Then you look at the odds of a pretty large portion of the audience moving to TOR, which looks like a terrific game. I think that's going to be really well-received by the population," Smedley admitted.
The executive also highlighted that this is the core problem with making online games based on licensed properties, as these will no doubt expire or shift to other companies and developers.
"Could we have renegotiated? Maybe, but I don't think that would be the right thing for the company. That's the problem with licenses: they end," he said. "We're going to continue to do some licensed work, but we're largely going to stick to original IP [going forward] because then we won't have this issue. We'll never have this problem with EverQuest."
Star Wars Galaxies is set to go offline on December 15, but SOE promised that plenty of in-game festivities will be held to give it a great farewell.