Free Radical Design was one of the UK"s biggest game developers; at one time it had 200 employees. However, the company shut down operations in late 2008 after a deal to develop Star Wars Battlefront 3 from LucasArts came crashing down. Eurogamer has posted an extensive feature on Free Radical"s history as its co-founders talk candidly about the company, and in particular on what happened to Star Wars Battlefront 3.
Founded in 1999 by members of the Nintendo 64 Goldeneye team at Rare, Free Radical is best known for the three games in the Timesplitters first person shooter franchise. It also created a third person action-adventure game, Second Sight. In 2008, it released Haze, a sci-fi shooter as a PS3 exclusive. However, that game was both a critical and sales bust.
The team had been working in secret on Star Wars: Battlefront 3, a new game in the best selling multiplayer first person shooter franchise (the first two games were developed by Pandemic). Free Radical started developing the game in 2006 under publisher LucasArts. The plan was to make a game where a player could make the transition from a first person shooter into a space battle sequence seamlessly.
Development of the game seemed to be going smoothly, but in early 2008, company co-founder David Doak claims their working relationship with LucasArts changed following the departure of its president Jim Ward. Doak claims after Ward"s departure, " ... 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."
LucasArts later stopped paying Free Radical for the project and the publisher itself went through a number of cost cutting measures that included mass layoffs. Even though there were other prospects for future games for Free Radical, none of them panned out, forcing the developer to shut down in late 2008.
When contacted, LucasArts would not confirm the statements from the ex-Free Radical team members, saying it does not comment on rumor and speculation.
Image via LucasArts