Two major studios are reportedly circling Star Wars Battlefront 3, and Lucasfilm is actively hunting for a developer to finally bring the sequel to life. The names in the frame are EA DICE, the studio behind both previous entries, and Bungie, the team responsible for Halo, Destiny, and Marathon. Neither studio has officially confirmed anything, but the rumor has enough specificity to turn heads.
The claim originates from a rumor column in a special retrospective issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, produced as part of a Kickstarter project to document the magazine's history. The column's track record gives it some credibility: other tips printed in the same issue have since proven accurate, including the lead actor for Hideo Kojima's Physint (later confirmed as Bill Skarsgård) and Diablo 4's planned Nintendo Switch 2 release (confirmed last month). The Battlefront 3 rumor is the standout claim still waiting on a follow-up.
Why Lucasfilm is still looking for a partner
The Star Wars Battlefront II situation is worth understanding here. EA held an exclusivity deal for Star Wars games for years, and DICE shipped both the 2015 reboot and the 2017 sequel under that arrangement. Battlefront 2's launch was a disaster by any measure. At release, unlocking a single hero like Darth Vader required roughly 40 hours of in-game credit grinding. The backlash crossed from gaming press into mainstream news, and Disney reportedly stepped in privately. EA pulled the microtransaction system entirely.
That exclusivity deal has since ended, which is exactly why Lucasfilm now has the freedom to pitch the project to whoever it wants. And based on the rumor, it's been doing exactly that, deploying what the column colorfully calls "probe droids" to find a willing development partner.
Battlefront 2's unlikely second life
The timing of renewed interest in the franchise makes sense when you look at what happened in 2025. Star Wars Battlefront 2 hit its all-time peak concurrent player count on Steam after a coordinated push from its Reddit and TikTok communities brought lapsed players back. A game that launched in infamy had quietly built a loyal player base over eight years.
That momentum wasn't lost on former developers either. Mats Helge Holm, who worked on both the original Battlefront 2 release and its Celebration Edition update, went public with his interest in a third game, saying that many ex-Battlefront developers want to return. "Me, and having heard around my group of ex-colleagues, we want to get the gang back together," he said when pressed on specifics.
The case for each studio
DICE is the obvious frontrunner. The studio built the Frostbite engine that powered both Battlefront games, knows the IP, and has the institutional knowledge of what went wrong the first time around. The key here is whether EA would be the publisher again or whether Lucasfilm would bring in a different partner.
Bungie is the wilder card. The studio has spent years building large-scale multiplayer shooter ecosystems, and its experience with live service design in the Destiny series is either a selling point or a red flag depending on your perspective. What Bungie brings is a proven ability to build games that players return to for years, which is exactly what Lucasfilm would want from a Battlefront sequel.
For players who want to revisit the series while waiting for news, the Star Wars Battlefront II guides are still worth a look given the game's active player base.
The shooter games genre has plenty of competition right now, which makes the timing of a potential Battlefront 3 announcement matter as much as the developer choice. A game that ships in two or three years enters a very different market than one that arrives in five. Lucasfilm will know that, and whoever pitches the project most convincingly on timeline and vision is likely to win the contract.
