The development team at BioWare behind Star Wars: The Old Republic has been hit with a number of layoffs.

The developer announced news of a restructuring at BioWare Austin. ”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,” said BioWare bosses Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka in a message to fans.

Despite the layoffs BioWare promised to support the MMO and continue to bring new content: ”Looking forward, the studio remains vibrant and passionate about our many upcoming initiatives for Star Wars: The Old Republic,” they said. ”We still have a very substantial development team working on supporting and growing the game. There are many strong initiatives planned for cool new content and new features that we’re excited to tell you about in the upcoming weeks and months.”

This is nothing to worry about, staff restructuring is normal after a game of this size launches. BioWare did originally promise to keep most of the staff on after launch – unlike most MMOs – however, we’re guessing that after the drop in subscriptions layoffs were needed to please investors. Development on the game should not slow because of these layoffs.

Are you still playing and enjoying the game or have your left?