Two Star Wars mobile games have been pulled from Apple's App Store and Google Play by Disney without informing one of the game's developers, Gamezebo reported.
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Developer NimbleBit, which created the game Tiny Death Star as a Star Wars spin-off of its game Tiny Tower, was not notified beforehand that the game would be pulled from the two app stores. Card-based game Star Wars: Assault Team was also discontinued from app stores.
According to the report, Disney is planning to retire the two mobile games to reinvest its resources into newer games like the recently released Star Wars: Commander strategy game.
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It seems like an extreme measure to take two full games offline just to move focus to a newer game, especially pulling a game like Tiny Death Star that's only a year old. It also seems like bad business practice to do so without notifying the developer, who is likely still making money off app purchases.
Back in 2012, Disney acquire all of LucasArts' game licensing rights after its purchase of LucasFilm. This acquisition stopped production of in-house development projects like the much-anticipated Star Wars 1313, though Disney did say that it would still operate LucasArts as a licensing studio. This meant that Disney could still publish Star Wars games like Tiny Death Star, though other developers would be in charge of actually making the game.
Since then, Disney has announced that development rights for Star Wars console games have been handed over to EA.
Star Wars: Commander, the mobile game that has survived this ordeal, is free to download from Apple's App Store and Google Play.
