This guest post is written by Liam Carnahan.
I spent my morning in the cantina on Tatooine negotiating with Jawas and cruising across the wastelands to visit a toothy old friend buried in the sand dunes.
I’m on my second playthrough of “Star Wars: Outlaws,” a game released on PlayStation and Xbox in August, 2024. It is by far one of my favorite games released in recent years, and yet I know few people who play it—many who haven’t even heard of it.
That’s because when the game was first released, it was plagued with problems. A controversial publisher, bugged gameplay, and a potential review-bombing campaign spelled doom for the game.
But with the release of “Outlaws” on Switch in 2025, and discounts for Star Wars Day last month, Kay Vess and her extremely motley crew are receiving a deserved redemption.
The backlash against ‘Outlaws’
“Star Wars: Outlaws” was released at a low point for Ubisoft. After a string of cancelled or disappointing game releases, an ugly leaked internal memo from the CEO berating developers, major layoffs, and internal harassment scandals, the gaming community was particularly vocal about its distaste for Ubisoft in 2024.
It didn’t help that the first release of “Outlaws” was riddled with bugs, some of which made the game unplayable—systems would crash and the missions wouldn’t complete. Kay often got stuck behind walls or abandoned by her own speeder.
Ubisoft released patches that fixed most of these issues, but it was perhaps too late for “Star Wars: Outlaws,” which still only has a 5.6 user score on Metacritic. However, among critics, the game has a much higher favorability rating: 75 out of 100.
If you dig deeper into those user scores, you’ll see that the game is incredibly polarizing — reviews either praise or bash the game. And some of the negative reviews are very revealing.
A review bombing campaign?
Many of the complaints about “Star Wars: Outlaws” stem from those early bugs and glitches. Frustrated gamers gave a 1-star review for making their systems crash, which is fair enough.
Many of those one-star reviews, however, have little to no genuine feedback for the game. “The worst Star Wars Game I have ever played,” writes one reviewer, who gave the game 0 stars barely a week after it came out. “Avoid at all costs, not worth the time or money.” Another simply writes “trash game.”
Others make blatant statements against Ubisoft in their poor reviews, calling the game a cash grab and a low-point for the company.
There are others that complain about the game’s storyline, plot, and characters, with users specifically complaining about our heroine, Kay Vess, calling her annoying or critiquing her looks. These reviews may stem back to an early controversy (perhaps manufactured for ragebait) about the actress who did the mo-cap for Kay.
There’s no way to know how many of these one-star votes are from fans who were truly upset about the game’s buggy mechanics, or how many are from people who were disappointed that a Star Wars game featured a protagonist that wasn’t a male Jedi. But it’s not hard to find conversations about it on forums.
“I was lied to,” wrote one Reddit user in May 2026. “I watched all those stupid 10+ hour anti-Outlaws videos on YouTube claiming it was woke. Actually, I’m loving the game.”
Whatever the reason for the negative reviews, it had an impact. After 30 days on the market, “Outlaws” had sold only 1 million copies, according to Insider Gaming. The company released a statement saying they’d learned lessons from “Outlaws,” and subsequently delayed the release of “Assassin’s Creed: Shadows,” which only upset users further.
Outlaws: A New Hope
Like a glass of Jawa Juice, the public perception of “Star Wars: Outlaws” has gotten better over time. The significantly lowered price tag, bug patches, additional platform releases, and vocal fans of the game have shifted the tides for Kay Vess and her crew.
New players have come to see what many, including me, saw when the game was first released. “Star Wars: Outlaws” is a fun, creative, imperfect game that gives us a detailed and deeply satisfying look at an underexplored aspect of the Star Wars universe.
Kay isn’t a Jedi. She can’t move things with her mind or wield a lightsaber — though she’s deadly with a blaster. But there are plenty of movies, TV shows, and other games (like the excellent but less-open-world “Star Wars: Jedi” series) that show us how to use The Force.
Instead, we get a character who is closer to a Han Solo type, though significantly less experienced, and with a smaller and cuter (sorry, Chewy) animal companion. Through Kay, we explore the seedy underbelly of some of the most iconic places from the Star Wars universe, and get up close and personal with some of its best side-characters.
Perhaps the plot is predictable, and maybe some of the animations aren’t as smooth as they could be. But those shortfalls don’t cancel out the thrill you get sneaking up on an Empire outpost in the jungle, blowing up TIE fighters with missiles, or sitting down to a game of Sabacc with one of the most famous pilots in the galaxy.
As for the future of this game, Ubisoft has released two DLC packages, but there has been no official word on a sequel. However, there is a glimmer of hope that we haven’t seen the last of Kay Vess with the release of a novel prequel, written by Mike Chen, earlier this year.
Perhaps if the “Outlaws” fan base continues to grow, we’ll get another chance to board the Trailblazer and blast some Imps with our favorite merquaal at our side. Until then, I’ll be in the cantina.
Image Credit: “Star Wars: Outlaws,” Ubisoft
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