LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga finally has a release date, but there’s a darker side to it.

January 21, 2022 | 13

One of the most anticipated (and ambitious) LEGO games, LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga finally has an official release date – 5 April 2022.

The long-awaited game which has been plagued by multiple delays (it was meant to be released in late 2020!), will be available on all major gaming platforms – Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

To understand more about the background of The Skywalker and all the issues plaguing it, check out this feature article I commissioned from games journalist Joshua Whittington.

A new 6-minute gameplay trailer just dropped as well, and among other new features, DLC (downloadable content) will include characters from The Mandalorian (Season 1 and 2), The Bad Batch, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Rogue One, and more.

The game looks really good, and it’s also the most ambitious and expansive LEGO Star Wars games yet, with so much packed in from across the Star Wars universe, all your favourite Star Wars characters being playable.

That said, there is a darker side to this saga,

I highly recommend reading this lengthy investigative piece by Polygon on some of the issues that have plagued the development and working culture a TT Games, the developers behind LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga.

In short, the piece blows the lid off some of the awful working conditions at TT Games, where the team was placed under immense pressure, or crunch as it’s known in the gaming industry to complete the game.

Polygon, through a series of anonymous interviews conducted with past and present TT Games team members details a repeated pattern of high staff turnover, unreasonable working hours, abuse from management, perceived unsafe working environment for women, and gender pay discrepancies.

This has led to among other things, low morale, and also a massive exodus of long-time TT Games team members and talent.

Now this isn’t unique to TT Games – the video games industry is rife with these stories, and at the very least, there doesn’t seem to be any sexual harrassment issues like the stories coming out of Activision-Blizzard that led to LEGO re-examining their relationship with the game publisher, leading to the pause of the Overwatch 2 Titan set.

It’s still sobering reading, and even as LEGO Star Wars fans get hyped up for The Skywalker Saga, it remains hard to overlook these issues surrounding the development of the game.

Are you looking forward to LEGO Star Wars The Skywalker Saga, and will you be getting it at launch?