On Tuesday, we received news that BioWare was bidding farewell to some of its members from the original SWTOR team. Here’s part of the announcement:
Originally posted by GregZeschuk (Source)
Hey folks, since you’re reading this you may likely have heard that we’ve done some restructuring here on the SWTOR team. Sadly, we are bidding farewell to some talented, passionate and exceptionally hard-working people who helped make SWTOR a reality. Impacting people’s lives this way is always very hard, but we’re ensuring the affected people are treated with dignity, fairness and respect.
Development team layoffs aren’t exactly anything out of the ordinary for most MMOs, since it takes more people to development an MMO than to maintain it, but many SWTOR fans were surprised this time because of a statement made around the time the game launched.
Back in December of 2011, James Ohlen was quoted to have said this statement, which can be found at Gamasutra:
“Unlike a lot of other game companies that, once they launch a game, downsize their teams radically, our plan is to keep the team together and continue to focus on building content.”
Not all things go as planned, I suppose.
Yesterday we found out that Stephen Reid was among the company layoffs. He confirmed it via Twitter, when he gave this series of tweets:
“I was one of those affected by layoffs at BioWare Austin yesterday. I got to build an amazing team while I was there, and miss them already.
I’m also going to miss #SWTOR and the community we created. Sure, I know some of you hated me, but hey, I still worked hard for you.
I’ll be Twitter-quiet for a bit, but I’ll be back soon-ish. Doing something, somewhere, and talking about it here. I hope we keep talking.
Last but not least: I was quiet for the last couple of weeks because I was full-on devoted to #SWTOR character transfer. It’s still coming!
Now I’ve got to go, because you don’t want to see a grown man cry on Twitter. Also, I don’t know the emoticon for it.
Okay, now I’m really ;_; Thanks to all”
We wish Stephen Reid and everyone else affected the best of luck, and thank them for their time and commitment to Star Wars: The Old Republic.
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