SWTOR Free to Play and the Anonymous BioWare Employee

Remember not so long ago when we brought you the story of the anonymous BioWare employee who left the comments about free to play on an article? He claimed he worked for BioWare and couldn’t reveal his name and said that the fans were to blame for the current state of the game. He also predicted a free to play model was on the way.

While some people believed he might be right, most others assumed it was a troll- some SWTOR hater trying to spread a rumor about the game being a flop or something or other…

But very shortly after – perhaps too shortly- we get the news that the game is, in fact, going free to play. So could this anonymous poster have actually been a BioWare employee?

Well, it certainly looks that way but then again, how hard was it to predict the free to play model coming soon? We said it ourselves here long before that anonymous poster. So while it could have been a disgruntled employee, it could have just as easily been a troll posing as such, since it’s not like the information was exactly secret or private.

And what about Stephen Reid interfering? Why did he step in and say it wasn’t true? He doesn’t even work there anymore but I’ve met him face to face and he’s not the kind of person to keep quiet when he thinks something isn’t right. So was he upset that the person was lying or was he upset that he knew it was true and the employee should have kept confidences?

It’s all a he-said, she-said situation since none of us can actually know the truth but it really does make you wonder. Maybe they knew back with Stephen Reid was let go that the game was going free to play and they were all told to keep quiet about it. Maybe the two big layoffs at BioWare Austin were because the game is losing money and the company knows they need to cut where they can and go in another direction.

At the same time… with the new model suspected to bring in lots of new players and subscribers, why would they let so much of their staff go? Aren’t they going to need the staff to manage the new influx of players?

I feel like the whole thing really leaves more unanswered questions rather than resolutions. What’s your take on the whole issue? Was the ‘anonymous employee’ real?

Lisa Clark

Lisa has been an avid gamer since she was old enough to hold her first controller and a game writer for more than a decade. A child of the Nintendo generation, she believes they just don’t make games like they used to but sometimes, they make them even better! While consoles will always be her first love, Lisa spends most of her gaming time on the PC these days- on MMOs and first-person shooters in particular.