Modder Claims That Aspyr Stole His Mod For Battlefront Collection

The current situation regarding the Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection is nothing short of a disaster. Receiving overwhelmingly negative reviews on Steam, with it not performing much better on consoles. The game was released in an unstable state with various bugs and crashes, and the online servers barely worked correctly. 



The developers for the collection Aspyr, known for re-releasing multiple Star Wars video games on modern consoles in the past, have been working franticly to fix as many of these issues as possible. But now they seem to have landed in some more hot water over a now-confirmed issue.

When the collection was first publicly shown, some had noticed that there was something off with the two additional playable heroes, Asajj Ventress and Kit Fisto. Both were paid DLC for Star Wars: Battlefront II on the original Xbox version from 2005. They are available for free on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S via backward compatibility. However, the new collection doesn’t seem to be using those versions; instead, it is custom-made versions that were developed by fans for the PC version.



In the original release, Ventress wields a unique nunchuck lightsaber weapon with unique animations to match, but in the reveal trailer, she is instead seen with duel-wielding blades. Fans modded Ventress into Battlefront II on PC by editing the Aayla Secura model, who also duel wields.

After fans began to notice, Aspyr responded by promising that absolutely no uncredited work would not appear in the final version of the game. And people believed them, including modder @iamashaymin, whose content was apparently being used. He even posted a video to their YouTube channel talking about the news.

But now that the game has launched there has been footage of the game showing it is still using modded content found with the fan-made Ventress model.

Ventress Doesn’t Have OG Animations
byu/Ok-Molasses11 inStarWarsBattlefront

Not only that, but @iamashaymin also found that their content was still being used. Specifically, the custom Kit Fisto animations (namely his force bubble power) were made to emulate the original Xbox version.

To back up this claim, here's a screenshot of that bubble effect taken in 2020 (It is hard to make out in the video since it is in motion, but trust that it is the same.) pic.twitter.com/PT1w0wNLzn

— iamashaymin (@iamashaymin) March 16, 2024

Not only are fans upset with the quality of the game but now a level of distrust has been put on the developers as fans feel they outright lied about not including uncredited mods in the game. Had they given credit, it wouldn’t have been as big of a deal. But outright lying and then using them anyway feels like a slap to the face to the dedicated fandom.

A huge missed opportunity would have been actually hiring many of these well-known modders who have been dedicated fans for the past 20 years and using their expertise in modding the games to improve the game’s overall quality. Adding the additional content would have been a dream come true for the fans to contribute to something that they hold dear.

Hopefully, not only will Aspyr be able to fix the online and connection issues but also edit out any uncredited content that they appropriated to rush this collection out onto the market. 

Source: IGN