A BioWare Austin developer is openly discussing the transfer of their long-running "Star Wars: The Old Republic" MMORPG to an external studio—games news sites picked up on insider information earlier this month alleging that the studio and its parent company (EA) were holding meetings with Broadsword Online Games. An EA spokesperson responded to the leak (at the time) and explained: "We're evaluating how we give the game and the team the best opportunity to grow and evolve, which includes conversations with Broadsword, a boutique studio that specializes in delivering online, community-driven experiences. Our goal is to do what is best for the game and its players." It seems that the involved parties have agreed upon terms for "handing off" responsibilities, according to a developer's recent declarations.

Keith Kanneg - the Executive producer for Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR) - has this week provided a comprehensive update about future plans on the game's discussion board: "Appreciate your patience with us as we continue to navigate the future shift of SWTOR's development team to a third party studio. We're working through the changes right now so I'll share with you the details I have. With 7.3 now live, our priority is continuing to prepare for Game Updates 7.3.1 and 7.4 along with planning for 2024 and 2025 with a focus on content and continued modernization initiatives." It is interesting that Broadsword is not named or directly referred to.He produced a mini FAQ session - presumably in response to community debates - and acknowledges that his team is moving out of the BioWare office: "We are already a remote team with staff working from home throughout the US and beyond. That said, our physical presence will still be remaining in Austin and we will be securing a new office space here." Kanneg addresses whether SWTOR is getting scaled back into a maintenance mode: "Absolutely not. As I've said before, we are working on future plans including more story and modernization initiatives for the game. We've upgraded the game to 64-bit, and are working on moving the servers to the cloud, and there are more content and tech updates on the way. Moving to a third party studio would allow us a lot of creative freedom, and we're very much looking forward to the opportunities that will be open to us." EA will remain involved in a limited capacity: "Similar to what we have said a few times now, it means nothing changes. The SWTOR team continues to be in control of the development and direction of the game with EA providing publishing and player support."


Kanneg emphasized that upgrades made to technical underpinnings will improve the game's health in the future: "We will have to reassess timelines, but we have every intention of moving forward with migrating our servers over to the cloud. We are also continuing with our evaluation regarding the APAC server as well." He signs off: "To close, I know that when something like this happens it can bring on feelings of doom and gloom. This isn't the beginning of the end, this truly is a new beginning for us. As you can imagine there are quite a few moving parts right now but we have a lot to talk about in our future. You can expect 7.3.1 towards the end of the summer, with the story continuing in 7.4 on its heels as we enter the holidays. Also on the tech side, we are working on further updates such as improved integrations with Steam and updating to DirectX 12. We'll start talking about all of this and more in the coming weeks. In the meantime, Game Update 7.3 is now live, and I'll be right in there with all of you going through the new story and Flashpoint on all my characters. Thanks for your patience with this, everyone. You'll be hearing from us again soon."