Star Wars The Old Republic is being dropped by Bioware

There were reports a while ago that Electronic Arts and Bioware were looking to transition Star Wars The Old Republic out of Bioware to another studio, Broadsword and today they confirmed that to be true.

What this means is that a lot of the team at Bioware Austin, who have been working on the game for 12 years, will be offered the chance to move across to the other company, one not owned by EA, or they lose their jobs. In a statement released by Gary McKay the General Manager of BioWare, he promises that the game will continue on as normal.

There are also exciting new features planned that the team is not quite ready to talk about yet, but suffice it to say that players can expect improvements and new content into the future.

Keith Kanneg the Executive Producer on Star Wars: The Old Republic also released a statement about the move, those his is less about it and more about the content plans still happening. The problem comes from the statement by McKay, this line in particular.

We at BioWare will miss being a part of SWTOR’s story going forward.

The reason why, the company is going to focus on their own ip Dragon Age and Mass Effect. The problem is that the company had a hit with Star Wars The Old Republic and they have decided to offload it to focus on something that is even more niche.

The Dragon Age series has had three games Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition, though it is four if we count that Facebook game. The last entry that did release was way back in 2014 and here we are a decade later and no new game.

Mass Effect on the other hand has had four new entries and one collection, the latter of which released more than 2 years ago and the next new entry is still in pre-production. The only other releases that the studio put out since The Old Republic launched were Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem, with both games failing.

To see a studio like Bioware up and abandon the only thing they have been consistently delivering on for a decade, in the interest on focusing more on their own brands, is just pathetic. There is a reason people were still playing The Old Republic and to see it being dumped by its developer, no matter how nicely they say it, it is being dumped, feels like an insult.