Why the Broadsword Move Could Be Good for SWTOR and Bad for Bioware

As a follow-up to my previous post, I wanted to talk a bit more about how the move to Broadsword could be a good thing for SWTOR. To be clear, we haven't had any more official information, and I think that there are a lot of questions to which we won't really get reliable answers until the deal has actually gone through and we see what happens in practice. However, it seems that the more common public narrative has been primarily negative, focusing on the possibility of the game going into maintenance mode, and I've seen some people express genuine confusion about how SWTOR leaving Bioware could be anything but a bad thing.

Especially when reading reports on larger gaming sites, the general vibe behind the narrative seems to be the same old hostility towards SWTOR. Oh look, there's that failed WoW killer failing again. Now it's doing so badly that EA doesn't even want it taking up any of Bioware's precious time anymore, so they're sending it out to pasture.

The thing that few people seem to consider is: What has Bioware done lately, other than maintain SWTOR? The last time they released a new game was in early 2019, when they released Anthem, and we all know how that turned out. (Though fun fact: while researching this, I found out that the game is actually still playable. From the way that Anthem's failure was reported on, I thought the servers had been fully shut down back in 2021.) Since then there's been nothing, and while there's been much talk about new Dragon Age and Mass Effect games being in development, there isn't a release date for either yet. In the meantime, Respawn Entertainment (another EA studio) shipped both Jedi: Fallen Order and its sequel Jedi: Survivor...

Before Anthem, Bioware's last game was Mass Effect: Andromeda, which released to rather mixed reviews and sold below expectations. The last time they actually released a game that was an unequivocal success was Dragon Age: Inquisition back in 2014, almost a decade ago. Since then there've been multiple exposés about what a mess they've been making of the development of their more recent titles.

How can a triple-A studio keep going for so long with so little output? Something tells me it's not from the sales of Garrus body pillows. It couldn't have anything to do with the underappreciated live-service game they are also running and which provides a continuous revenue stream while the people supposedly making the big, important titles faff around indecisively, could it?

EA's official statement in response to the IGN article said that "BioWare will focus its resources on single-player games such as Dragon Age and Mass Effect" and most people seemed to read that as SWTOR having been an annoying distraction for the studio. There's another way to read it though, and that is as EA putting its foot down that if Bioware wants to be a single-player game studio, they need to actually make some single-player games, not just dither for years while relying on SWTOR to balance their books.

In that version, EA is actually doing SWTOR a favour of sorts by moving it to another studio that actually knows and cares about MMOs, whether that's intentional or not. And interestingly, former SWTOR devs have been popping up on Twitter to say pretty much that. Damion Schubert, who was lead designer for the game during its early years, asserts that it still makes good money, and that EA just isn't that interested in investing in it because their focus is on mega-titles like FIFA, but that it could absolutely thrive under a smaller studio. He also immediately stated that this was "bad news for Bioware".

Chris Schmidt, who worked on SWTOR for over a decade, tweeted a lengthy thread in which he also talks about how unappreciated SWTOR has been as a property on Bioware's end, despite of bringing in "mountains of income" that served to build up other franchises. So he sees the move to Broadsword as an opportunity for the SWTOR team (which was already quite removed from the rest of Bioware as it was) to move on to an environment where their work will be understood and appreciated, giving the game a chance to shine and presumably also reap the rewards for good work instead of simply having them rolled into the reporting for a bigger studio that isn't actually doing so well.

Now, all of this is coming from ex-devs - the current ones might feel differently for all we know, and even if they don't, a lot of things would have to go right in a very specific way for things to work out as Damion and Chris propose. So I'm not saying this is definitely or even likely to happen - but it is currently one of many possibilities, and it's worth noting. Especially as I do tend to lend a bit more weight to the words of actual devs who worked on the game than to those of random internet pundits who think that this must be the end for SWTOR just because they didn't like the last expansion.

Interestingly, after I finished the first draft of this post, Keith took to the forums a second time to follow-up on his previous post by saying: "Whoa whoa everyone... I was hoping me telling you about the upcoming releases would help you understand this is a new beginning, not the end." That wording indicates to me that he views this as a positive development as well (though I guess the proof will be in the pudding in terms of whether he's one of the ones to make the transition himself).

Naturally, as long-time fan of the game I prefer to be optimistic as well, but I hope that this post shows that this view doesn't come entirely out of thin air. We all have to wait to see what actually happens, and there's no benefit in spending the next few months dooming. In the meantime, we've got 7.3 to look forward to next week (which, incidentally, means that my prediction of a mid-June release was spot on) and I'm excited to play it (especially as I have two days off right after the day of the patch, which wasn't planned at all but should work out extra nicely).