Tiny Death Star‘s creator is not having a good day. A cursory look at the iOS App Store and Google Play reveals that Disney has fired its Mickey-Mouse-shaped Death Star at two relatively short-lived Star Wars games: Tiny Death Star and Star Wars Assault Team.
The latter was a basic albeit solid card battler, but the former was an adorable Star Wars reskin of developer Nimblebit’s insidiously/Darth Sidiously addictive Tiny Tower. It still had a lot of Tiny Tower‘s annoying issues, but it was pretty well-received.
Flash forward to today. Speaking with PocketGamer, Nimblebit’s Ian Marsh said he wasn’t even told about Disney’s decision to pull the plug before it happened. “My assumption is they don’t feel it is worth it to maintain the game any longer,” he added.
On top of that, it was apparently “a significant source of revenue for us, so it stings that much more.”
A source close to the situation claimed that Disney canned the two fun-sized Star Wars games to focus on other, potentially bigger ones like mobile tower defence game Star Wars: Commander.
All in all, it’s rough. I understand needing to reallocate resources (yes, even when you’re a company of Disney’s “that’s no moon!”-level size), but treating developers poorly is a) classless and b) a crappy way to run a business. Fans still playing these games get the short end of the glowy, soowshy light stick too, given that their communities can’t really add new members anymore. So it’s a shame all around. Here’s hoping Disney doesn’t make a habit out of this kind of thing.
I’ve reached out to Disney and Nimblebit for further comment. I’ll update this post when I hear back.
Comments
3 responses to “Disney Kills Star Wars Game Without Telling Creator”
The card one was horrible, TIny Death Star was okay but not as good as other Star Wars reskin games of the past, and it’s pay model was horrendous, a weak single player pay to win.
Sounds like Disney holds all rights, not to mention is entitled to focus their brand as they see fit? It was a bit jerky not to inform the developers beforehand, but perhaps that channel was never really open?
Actually I’m going to say not really.
I will explain though but it might get a bit long.
Usually you’d be right. But although I got rather addicted to Tiny Death Star it actually had a lot of issues early on, bugs that erased your entire process were common and there was no way to back up your progress.
Then it started reaming users for money at every opportunity and playing free became more and more challenging till it just wasn’t worth the effort especially after they patched out the main methods for farming progression for free.
During all this, Nimblebit washed their hands of it and directed annoyed customers to Disney saying that other than licensing they had nothing to do with the game. You can’t wash your hands of something completely and then complain when the person actually maintaining it decided it isn’t worth it.
Of course they won’t be happy about it, they were getting royalties without doing any work. That will of course now dry up.