Aspyr’s Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection was allegedly found to use modder iamashaymin’s work without contacting or crediting them after Aspyr had previously said that it would not be in the final release of the game.
This issue was first noticed in the game’s reveal trailer, where it seemed that the character of Asajj Ventress was a reskin of another character, Aayla Secura. Ventress and another character, Kit Fisto, were added to the original Star Wars: Battlefront II with unique animations as Xbox-exclusive DLC. Modder iamashaymin eventually brought these characters to the PC version of the game by reskinning existing characters with the same animations.
Asajj Ventress and Kit Fisto were set to be added back to Aspyr’s 2024 collection of the first two Battlefront games, bringing them officially to other platforms. However, fans noticed that Ventress lacked her unique animations from the Xbox version of the game, indicating that the studio may have used iamashaymin’s reskin.
Aspyr put out a statement to IGN at the time, stating that they “mistakenly included content that is not in the product, and that mistake made it in to the final cut [of the trailer]. The upcoming release of Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection does not include any code or content that is taken from uncredited sources.”
Despite that statement, it appears that iamashaymin’s mod did make it into the final release, though it was eventually replaced in a patch when fans took notice. IGN spoke to iamashaymin about the issue, where they expressed their disappointment in the release.
“This release has been a total mess,” they said “The fact they had to release patches both before and immediately after releasing two decade old games really says it all. Especially considering part of the patches is rumored to have removed content they had already said was removed months ago.”
They said that the modding community is ready to fix problems with the game, which includes latency issues and various bugs. iamashaymin said that the community hoped that the new release would fix existing bugs with the games, but instead came with issues modders had already solved.
“What we found on release was a very broken game, with a lot of issues we have fixed in the past,” they said. “As well as any mod support for both games being quite badly damaged although just barely functional for Battlefront 2. (All mods for Battlefront 1 are broken now.)”
Some issues, they said, are new to this version of the game, with incorrect textures, lighting issues, and missing geometry, all of which the modding community plans to fix.
“All of these and quite a lot more, are relatively easy fixes when you understand what you’re doing,” they said. “I’d imagine Aspyr could patch a lot of these quickly but we have the resources and ability to do it ourselves and produce probably better results. This is what two decades of shared experience with these titles gives us.”