Players Committee-Lucasfilm agreement

Note: Prefer dated primary or archived sources. Soft / secondary claims are labeled. This page does not invent a Disney-era contract text that has not been published. Broader timeline: History of the Players Committee.

The Players Committee–Lucasfilm agreement is the community name for the arrangement under which the volunteer Players Committee (PC) continued organized play and free electronic Virtual cards for Star Wars CCG after Decipher lost the commercial Lucasfilm license. Public PC / Decipher materials describe cooperation with Decipher and Lucasfilm Ltd., with explicit distribution restrictions — not a published full legal contract on this wiki.

This wiki is a fan encyclopedia. It is not the Players Committee and does not replace starwarsccg.org.

After Decipher lost the license

In December 2001, Decipher announced it had been unable to extend its Lucasfilm license to continue producing the game. Unable to keep producing, marketing, or supporting the commercial product, Decipher formed a volunteer Players' Committee / Player Advocate structure so fans could continue tournaments, rulings, and support.

Period research on this wiki places an Advocate announcement around ~25 January 2002 (soft / med until a single stable permalink is locked on History of the Players Committee). The June 2002 Wayback HTML of the Decipher Players' Committee page remains the firmly linked contemporary cite.

Stated restrictions (PC About)

PC About copy summarizes the ability to create new cards with restrictions, including:

• Cards could only be distributed electronically
• The PC could not create physical cards
• The PC could not utilize new images from the Star Wars films
• Everything the PC created must be distributed for free (no sale of PC-created cards)

With the cooperation of Decipher and Lucasfilm Ltd., the PC began releasing Virtual cards in 2002 as printable game-text overlays (and later fuller frames) placed over existing Decipher cards — see V-slips and Virtual Sets (2002-2009).

Forum / design-policy discussions also refer to PC agreements with Lucasfilm and Decipher when explaining tournament proxy policy and related limits (secondary community sources; not a substitute for the unpublished contract text).

Disney takeover of Lucasfilm (context)

The Walt Disney Company announced its agreement to acquire Lucasfilm on 30 October 2012 (primary Disney / SEC materials).

Gap (honest): this wiki has not located a primary Disney- or Lucasfilm-published document that restates, novates, or reprints the PC support arrangement after the acquisition. Current PC About pages still describe ongoing work with the cooperation of Decipher and Lucasfilm Ltd. and do not publish a separate Disney-era agreement text.

Soft secondary (labeled)

A May 2018 The Ringer feature interviews PC lead advocate Scott Lingrell and others. It reports (soft / secondary) that roughly eight years before that article the PC wrote Lucasfilm about reclaiming a commercial license; Lucasfilm declined manufacturing, but community representatives later met Lucasfilm staff who expressed that the volunteer work was welcome — with the PC remaining careful not to lose that trust. That article is not a primary legal source for Disney-era contract terms.

Separate commercial Star Wars tabletop licenses (e.g. Fantasy Flight Games' 2011 Lucasfilm games license for card/RPG/miniatures products) are not the same arrangement as PC Virtual support for Decipher's out-of-print CCG.

Continuity of Virtual program

Regardless of the unpublished contract file, the PC continued releasing free Virtual slips / sets after 2012, including the 2014 Virtual Card Reset and ongoing Current Virtual sets — documented on History of the Players Committee, Formats, and the Main Page Virtual Modern band.

See also

• History of the Players Committee
• Players Committee
• V-slips
• Virtual Sets (2002-2009)
• Formats

Gaps

• Full text of any Decipher / Lucasfilm / PC legal agreement: not published on cited primary pages
• Primary Disney-era restatement or novation of PC support rights: not found in this research pass
• Exact calendar date of any post-acquisition confirmation meeting: only soft secondary (Ringer)

Sources

• Decipher Players' Committee page (Wayback, June 2002)
• starwarsccg.org About Us / About; playerscommittee.org About
• TFN Virtual Set 1 announce (12 February 2002)
• Disney Lucasfilm acquisition announce / Form 8-K (30 October 2012)
• The Ringer (21 May 2018) — soft secondary only
• ICv2 FFG license note (context; not PC agreement)