With all the bad news about The Old Republic, how could things get any worse? How about layoffs at BioWare Austin? That’s what R.A. Salvatore said has happened. Speaking with Eurogamer about the Amalur MMO we may never see, the author who created Drizzt says that the MMO market is really hard to get into and uses BioWare’s troubles with TOR as an example:

“Star Wars is aching, by all reports, and it’s a solid game with groundbreaking voice-over work. EA bought Mythic, and Warhammer crashed. Bioware’s MMO is hurting (they just laid off a bunch of people in their Austin Studio).”

Now there have been no confirmed layoffs at BioWare Austin that EA has talked about, but as 38 Studios was working on a MMO and they did have connections to EA; it’s very possible that Salvatore heard about layoffs…possibly through former TOR developers who were looking for work. Also, some MMOs do shed staff after a launch, but when that happens it’s usually not a good sign. The last big MMO to do that right after launch was DCUO, and it went free to play a few months later.