Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection incorporated a modder's work after Aspyr promised it would not: 'This release has been a total mess'

Balance has been restored to the Force. The well-liked Star Wars Dark Forces Remaster was followed by a Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection that's not quite so well-liked. Among the early complaints was the fact the trailer showed a mod had been incorporated without the permission of the modder. Aspyr, the studio behind this remaster, swore  the actual release version wouldn't use anyone else's «code or content» without permission. And, while it's since been patched out, that didn't turn out to be true. On both PC and PlayStation, the launch version did indeed incorporate a mod that restored Asajj Ventress as a playable character. 

Ventress was exclusive to the Xbox version of Battlefront 2 back in 2005, but modder iamashaymin reskinned Aayla Secura to sneak her into the PC Version. That's why you can tell the footage captured in the Battlefront Classic Collection depicts iamashaymin's mod: Ventress is using Secura's animations and lightsabers. (Funnily enough, later versions of the mod do have Ventress's animations, so Aspyr hadn't even been using an up-to-date version of it.)

IGN contacted iamashaymin, who wasn't impressed. «This release has been a total mess. The fact they had to release patches both before and immediately after releasing two decade old games really says it all,» the modder said.

«There's loads of these weird issues that are just screaming rushed development,» they went on. «Some textures in the game are even muddled with those from Battlefront 1, like Kashyyyk's water is blue like in Battlefront 1 and not gray like in Battlefront 2 and the DLC maps themselves use completely the wrong textures in a lot of places,» iamashaymin said.

The Battlefront modding community had been standing ready, eager to get to grips with the re-release. They're not feeling quite so positive about it now, iamashaymin said. «We were hoping for improvements we could take advantage of to make better and of course would be ready to port and redevelop our modded