Indie developer Frontwire Studios will reimagine its Star Wars Battlefront fan game -- Star Wars: Galaxy in Turmoil -- as a completely original title after Lucasfilm requested production be stopped. 

The developer previously said its pseudo-sequel, which features a number of Star Wars likenesses, planets, weapons, and vehicles, was on solid legal ground and should be considered a parody. 

Legally speaking, a parody is defined in some countries as a distorted or derivative imitation of an original work -- which, in this case, was Free Radical's canned Battlefront 3 project. 

However, after being contacted by Lucasfilm in June and discussing the project with execs over phone, Frontwire president Tony Romanelli has been forced to shelve Galaxy in Turmoil as he can't envision winning a legal battle against the entertainment juggernaut. 

"[Lucasfilm and EA's] main concern was due to the possibility of Galaxy in Turmoil taking away attention from their Battlefront franchise," explained Romanelli on the Frontwire blog.

"I tried to pitch the idea about putting Galaxy in Turmoil behind EA’s paywall but was told that EA had previously rejected that proposition as well.

"Due to their exclusive contract with EA, Lucasfilm was contractually obligated to deny our request for the use of the Star Wars IP for Galaxy in Turmoil based on EA’s decision."

That being said, Lucasfilm have no problem with the project going ahead, as long as it doesn't make use of the the Star Wars IP. As such, Frontwire will be "pivoting away" from Star Wars to create a wholly original game set in a new universe.

The new version of Galaxy in Turmoil will retain many promised features, such as ground-to-space combat, destructible capital ships, and a single-player campaign, and will still release for free. 

The studio will eventually look to fund development through a crowdfunding campaign, but says it will only kick start that process when it has a fully playable demo.