Star Wars: The Old Republic, the MMO launched in 2011, is reportedly switching development studios. The PC game"s original team at BioWare may soon turn it over to Broadsword Online Games.
IGN reports that the game"s publisher Electronic Arts has made a tentative deal with Broadsword to take the reigns of Star Wars: The Old Republic, which may become final later in June. The deal is because BioWare, which is owned by EA, wants to concentrate on its upcoming new Dragon Age and Mass Effect games.
Broadsword Online Games currently operates and maintains two of EA"s older PC MMO titles: Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot. IGN reports that over half of BioWare"s current Star Wars: The Old Republic team will transfer to Broadsword once development of the game makes that switch. The remaining team members may be offered other jobs at EA, but if none are available some team members could face layoffs.
In a statement to IGN, EA would not directly confirm its story, but did say that it is "evaluating how we give the game and the team the best opportunity to grow and evolve, which includes conversations with Broadsword."
BioWare recently announced that the subtitle of the next Dragon Age fantasy RPG game will be Dreadwolf. Right now, there"s very little info on the game itself or its current state of development. It also recently announced that one of the original BioWare Dragon Age team members, Mark Darrah, had returned to the developer to serve as a consultant on Dreadwolf.
While the new Dragon Age game is the current top priority for BioWare, it is also in preproduction for its next game in the sci-fi Mass Effect series. A teaser trailer was released way back in 2020, but since then we haven"t heard much about the game"s current progress.