http://www.pcgamer.com/ex-visceral-employee-calls-the-studios-closure-a-mercy-killing/

It was big, sad news when Electronic Arts closed Visceral Games and pulled the plug on the Amy Hennig-led Star Wars game it had in development. Fingers were quickly pointed at EA, which has a well-earned reputation for putting down perfectly healthy studios—and which former BioWare designer Manveer Heir said shortly after the shutdown is moving away from single-player games in favor of open worlds, because they're easier to monetize. 

But as a very in-depth report from Kotaku makes clear, the situation was a lot more complicated than that. Visceral's Star Wars project, known internally as Ragtag (which you would think is more suitable for a Battlestar Galactica game, but I digress), got off to a rough start, even before it actually started. Dead Space 3 didn't meet expectations, which compelled the studio to take on Battlefield Hardline, seen by management as a relatively safe bet. A smaller part of the studio began work on an open-world pirate game code-named Jamaica, but that was canned and replaced by a "space scoundrel" Star Wars game called Yuma after EA made its exclusive videogame deal with Disney.