Free Radical co-founders David Doak and Steve Ellis revealed that "psychopaths" at Lucas Arts colluded to get rid of Star Wars: Battlefront 3 even though the game was nearly finished.
According to Doak, things started to get worse soon after Jim Ward stepped down as president of Lucas Arts. Ward’s predecessor, Darrell Rodriguez, didn’t believe that the game has a large enough fan base. "It was worrying," Doak described the situation, "but it didn't seem like it would be a bad thing. And then we went from talking to people who were passionate about making games to talking to psychopaths who insisted on having an unpleasant lawyer in the room."
The new president then started to look for reasons to cancel the game. "If a publisher wants to find something that is wrong with a milestone, it's very easy for them to do so as there are so many grey areas within a deliverable. If the contract says, 'graphics for level X to be release quality,' who can say what's release quality? And there you have it ... We hadn't been paid for six months."
"In many ways it was a depressing farce talking to them," Doak said. "They had an agenda motivated by purely financial concerns. Their goal was to stop doing it. And it didn't matter that we had a contract that protected us."
"your contract is only worth as much as how far you can pursue it in court," Ellis concluded.
