Star Wars: EA Reportedly Will Not Let BioWare Make KOTOR Games

BioWare has supposedly asked EA multiple times for permission to make a new KOTOR game.

Over the years, we’ve heard a lot of talk about BioWare working on a new KOTOR game. It was even reported that their Austin studio was secretly hard at work on a new entry in the series. However, a recent update to the EA/Star Wars fiasco seems to indicate that isn’t the case. 

“They’ve tried to make it happen, more than once from what I’ve heard,” says Kotaku’s Jason Schreier on Twitter in response to a question about BioWare making another KOTOR game. “No luck.”

On its own, there’s not much information there, but there is more to this story. First off, Jason Schreier has been a reliable source for years when it comes to reporting on what’s happening at various video game studios. He’s also responsible for that recent report that sheds some light on why the EA era of Star Wars games has been disastrous thus far

He’s also one of the people who previously stated that those reports which suggested BioWare is actively working on a new KOTOR game are mostly false. It seems that there was a point when BioWare had pitched the idea of a new KOTOR to the higher-ups at EA (and possibly worked on some kind of pitch for the game that might have included tech demos), but they never actually began work on such a project in earnest. 

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The question now is: “Why has EA seemingly denied them the right to do so?” For our best guess on that, we’d direct you to that previously mentioned report in which it was seemingly determined that EA isn’t really all that enthusiastic about the idea of having so many Star Wars games in development at once. That report (which EA officially disputes) indicated that EA’s CEO was never really that excited about the idea of a long exclusive Star Wars agreement. If true, that would explain why EA has done the bare minimum (sometimes worse) with the license. 

What’s really heartbreaking is the implications this news has regarding BioWare’s true intentions. They’ve repeatedly stated that Anthem is the kind of game they want to make (despite evidence to the contrary), but now we hear that they have seemingly made multiple attempts to revisit one of their most beloved franchises beyond adding new content to the Old Republic MMO. 

The shame of it all is that the second KOTOR game left us dreaming of the possibilities of that franchise and that the recent history of Star Wars games has left us fondly remembering the days in which Star Wars games were arguably superior to the movies they are based on

Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014