LucasArts confirms layoffs

By Tom Magrino, GameSpotPosted Jun 6, 2008 10:40 am PT

Indiana Jones publisher says recent round of staff reductions was "appropriate to various project's lifecycles"; VP of product development Peter Hirschmann also out.

LucasArts has been in a significant period of transition as of late. In April, the Indiana Jones gamemaker snagged a new president in Darrell Rodriguez, EA's former chief operating officer at its Los Angeles studio. Rodriguez was brought on to replace Jim Ward, who abruptly stepped down from the company's top position in February. In May, LucasArts revealed that it, too, would no longer be part of industry trade body the Entertainment Software Association. It is now June, and LucasArts is once again continuing its transitional period.

GameSpot has learned and subsequently confirmed with LucasArts that the gamemaker has laid off a number of employees at its San Francisco, California-based studio. A LucasArts representative was unwilling to confirm the breadth of the layoffs, but tips and various online reports from numerous former LucasArts employees peg the exact number at between 75 and 100.

According to LucasArts, the layoffs did not target any specific projects, and were companywide. "The layoffs were appropriate to where we are at in various project's lifecycles," said the representative. Having just published the Traveller's Tales-developed Lego Indiana Jones, the rep confirmed that the company's two highest-profile projects in the pipe--Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Fracture--have not been impacted by the staff reductions, and are still on track for their respective September and October releases.

When questioned as to whether the recent layoffs signal an intent for the gamemaker to outsource development of its various properties to third-party studios, the rep gave a soft demurral. "We're committed to our internal studio and to continue working with external partners," said the LucasArts rep.

LucasArts also confirmed that the company's vice president of product development Peter Hirschmann has also departed the company, though his decision to leave was not party to the layoffs. "Peter's decision to leave was mutual," commented the LucasArts rep. "He's a really good guy who brought us into next-gen development."

114 Comments

  • KASMIRSS

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 9:28 am PT

    When 1st Kotor came out I remember they had a lot of different games under development. Know there is none for PC fans, and new MMORPG about whom we know only one thing - we will need to wait a long long time.

    Plus Imnot a mmorpg fan at all.

    Since 2003 a lot of pc players have lost their trust in Lucasarts - for me every E3 is a disappointment . Like in christmas every one gets great present except you. (and like this 5 years i a row)

  • H-A-V-O-K

    Posted Jun 13, 2008 4:05 pm PT

    @thenephariouson: Agreed. Lucas arts has been in need of some serious quality control for a few years it seems as though the only good games to come from the franchise has nothing to do with the license at all simply the production team behind it I keep saying time and time again the only reason KOTOR had any success at all was because of Bioware plain and simple.
    Anway good too see ya again mate, its been awhile

  • thenephariouson

    Posted Jun 9, 2008 2:55 pm PT

    Wheres the inginuity? i mean wheres the 'Grim Fandango's' & 'Day of the Tenticle' types of games, you know, the original games that were totally unique. All they seem to do is simply try and squeeze as much money out of the ca$h cow that is the Star Wars universe and im tired of them as a simple run-n-gun FPS with 'Star Wars' sound effects simply does not qualify as a top notch product!!! Sorry but i have no sympathy! They should be far more imaginative (Yes i am aware of 'Fracture').

  • nate1222

    Posted Jun 9, 2008 12:53 pm PT

    WHO SAID LUCAS ARTS DIDN'T HAVE GOOD GAMES?!
    Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, Star Wars Battlefront, Jedi Outcast... There are probably more, but those three alone prove my point! Then we've got Mercenaries: World In Flames and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed coming out this summer. Someone needs to shut their damn piehole!

  • LindBergh2007

    Posted Jun 9, 2008 12:32 pm PT

    What happened to those days? What happen to test marketing games so they could be recalled before being published. Back in the NES days, Nintendo had very strict licensing policies, in the Genesis days, SEGA had a special test-drive section for Sega Channel users. Where did it all end? It ended when the ESA decided to taken control of marketing and publishing of games in 2004 and then alot of big publishers decided to make huge deals with hollywood and since there were less and less 3rd party exclusives, the software market suddenly became too competitive.

    You can blame the U.S. economy for this rapid decline and possible industry collapse, but most of it comes from monopolizing the industry with ESA,EA,Activision,LucasArts,THQ and many of the major U.S. publishers the main culprit. Since nobody wants to set a standard or limit, development costs will continue to skyrocket and I wouldn't be surprised if the price for gamejumps to $70! And i'm not kidding! Especially since food,gas and inflation continues to rise.

    If there is a collapse before the end of year, and I expect it to occur in sereval months. Expect alot of majors U.S. publishers to fall from grace but I think alot of the Japanese publishers won't be entirely affected much since they don't have a huge share of the U.S. software market. I alos believe that a video game crash would prepell SEGA back into the console market with a cutting edge,256-bit multmedia console, with an inexpensive price tag, better development kits and with a special 3rd party policy requiring all third party publishers to test market high profile games.

    So while it seems like a majotr decline and possible collapse is becoming more and more likely, kind in mind that a crash or collapse is a good thing, amd much like the crash of '84, the industry will recover a rise back to life again.

  • Irve

    Posted Jun 9, 2008 9:12 am PT

    well , seeing as they make very few games i'm sure they were overstaffed .. would ahve been nice for these 75-100 people to be worknig on another monkey island game !! In fact what they really need to do is get their library out on XBLA and PSN

  • connectedgeek

    Posted Jun 9, 2008 9:01 am PT

    How very sad

  • turnerdoc

    Posted Jun 9, 2008 7:52 am PT

    to me the best star wars game was pc star wars galaxies.console star wars knights of the old republic 1 and 2

  • ZhugeMarc

    Posted Jun 9, 2008 7:23 am PT

    okassar: "and seeing how Star Wars Battlefront 2 is said by a lot of people to be their best game,LucasArts isn't too good"

    Wait, who says that? Because they're idiots. LucasArts best games weren't even in this century. Go play the Monkey Island series, Grim Fandango, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max Hit the Road, TIE Fighter, et al and then speak about best games.

  • dmiisha_796

    Posted Jun 9, 2008 5:51 am PT

    lucasarts last i checked are not heading towards anywhere bad. So why are they laying off so many people from the pay-role?

  • Avenger1324

    Posted Jun 9, 2008 5:35 am PT

    The wording of the statement looks bad for Traveller's tales. Unless there is another lego game in the pipeline a lot of the layoffs could be with them.

  • fredwv

    Posted Jun 9, 2008 4:09 am PT

    oh noooossss.... no more lego games! Hmmm... this necessarily bad news? :p I used to like the adventure games LucasArts made. They should get back to that.

  • melante

    Posted Jun 9, 2008 12:49 am PT

    " new president in Darrell Rodriguez, EA's former chief operating officer" it seems wherever EA people go, other people lose their jobs.... :-(

  • Seanakin

    Posted Jun 8, 2008 7:30 pm PT

    Um, last I checked, LucasArts is a privately-held company, like Levi Strauss or M&M Mars, so they therefore are not burdened by the need for full financial disclosure (unlike the publicly-traded companies), nor are they forced to waste their time on pleasing the shareholders, especially the institutional ones. So if LucasArts is indeed not profiting on their various ventures to their liking, they are in no way bound to announce this to the public, and whatever move they make is of their own volition, as opposed to doing it for the sake of PR.

    That all said, let us not forget that despite cleaning up at the box office, Lucas caused heads to roll at LFL because The Empire Strikes Back came in late and over budget.

  • Ranteal

    Posted Jun 8, 2008 6:38 pm PT

    transitional period. Thats another way of saying "For Sale"

  • Josepiphus

    Posted Jun 8, 2008 1:23 pm PT

    Some information that would have been good to include in this article would be how many employees lucas arts has or what percentage of the workforce this 75 to 100 represents. Without that information it's really rather presumptuos to conclude any of the things I've seen posted in the comments.

  • Gammit10

    Posted Jun 8, 2008 12:37 pm PT

    As long as they "keep looking into" returning to adventure games with their third-party studio help... yeah, not likely.

  • combatsoldier

    Posted Jun 8, 2008 10:50 am PT

    man what a let down. I hope this isnt a view of things to come. I am a huge fan of lucas arts and i hope there stock stays up. then again this could just be something minor that was blown up to get a reaction out of us. you know how something small can turn into a volcano. Lets just hope lucas will remain on top.

  • Shaman432

    Posted Jun 8, 2008 9:38 am PT

    As an end-user who just likes to play games I forget sometimes that it is a business and they get made somewhere by someone just like food/gas and stuff and I was looking SO forward to TFU as about the only thing of interest later this year but if this is how they treat their ppl and ol' Georgie boy signs off on it I might have to think twice.

  • icym

    Posted Jun 8, 2008 7:33 am PT

    re: jlwood830

    you're totally right about short term profits. Look at the stupid thinking of US automakers, SUV were hot so they geared only to that and didn't look to the inevitable future of soaring gas prices. So, now they laid off tens of thousands of people for their short term thinking. And now they're planning to outsource it. Lucasarts and US automakers must have gone to the same mail order degree business school.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Quick Links

Summary | Reviews | News | Previews & Features | Images | Videos | Downloads | Answers | Hints & Cheats | Forum | Check Prices

Check Prices: $16.5 – 32.99

Amazon.com $19.82 SHOP ›
GameQuest $19.99 SHOP ›
Amazon.com Marketplace $26.77 SHOP ›
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Boxshot Enlarge the boxshot
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Game Stats

Full Game Details »Close
Also on

Games you may like…

Users who looked at content for this game also looked at these games.

See More Similar Games