It's official: Disney's long-standing exclusivity deal on 'Star Wars' games just ended

• Since 2013, "Madden" and "FIFA" maker Electronic Arts has held exclusive rights to make "Star Wars" games, per a deal with Disney.
• The agreement officially ended Wednesday with the announcement of a new "Star Wars" game made in partnership with "Assassin's Creed" maker Ubisoft.
• "EA has been and will continue to be a very strategic and important partner for us now and going forward," Disney senior vice president of games Sean Shoptaw told Wired. "We did feel like there's room for others."

Since 2013, just one game publisher has held the rights to make games based on the "Star Wars" license: Electronic Arts, the makers of "FIFA," "Madden," and the "Battlefield" series.

On Wednesday, that exclusivity agreement finally came to an end with the announcement of a new "Star Wars" game from "Assassin's Creed" maker Ubisoft. Described as a "brand-new, story-driven, open world 'Star Wars' adventure," the game is being made by Ubisoft's Massive studio, which last produced "The Division 2" in 2019. It's unlikely to be the only "Star Wars" gaming project in production, including an expected sequel to "Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order" from EA's Respawn Entertainment. Despite ending the exclusivity deal, a Disney executive told Wired it has no plans to terminate its relationship with EA.

"EA has been and will continue to be a very strategic and important partner for us now and going forward," Disney senior vice president of games Sean Shoptaw told Wired. "We did feel like there's room for others."

The announcement of a new "Star Wars" game from Disney - the first with a new gaming partner in eight years - came the same week that the entertainment giant revealed another collaboration: an entirely new game based on "Indiana Jones," with a new story outside of the filmography, made by Microsoft-owned Bethesda and its subsidiary MachineGames.

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The two projects represent a renewed push into video games from Disney's Lucasfilm group, which also announced a big rebranding earlier this week. "Lucasfilm Games is now the official identity for all gaming titles from Lucasfilm, a name that encompasses the company's rich catalog of video games and its eye toward the future," the company said in a blog post. To that end, Lucasfilm Games is producing games based on "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" that are "developed in collaboration with the finest studios across the [game] industry," it said in the post.

Though Disney has a long history of TV and film production, the company has a rocky history with video game production and outright divested from the production side of the video game business back in 2016.

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