Star Wars: The Old Republic GM departs

Electronic Arts maintains that it will have gotten a return on its investment if BioWare Austin's massively multiplayer online role-playing game Star Wars: The Old Republic can maintain 500,000 subscribers. Answers to The Old Republic's viability will begin to arrive sometime before March 31, 2012, but the head of BioWare's Austin studio won't be sticking around to receive them firsthand.

Today, EA confirmed that BioWare Austin general manager Gordon Walton resigned his position in January. According to Walton's LinkedIn profile, he did so to take a position with Playdom, which Disney purchased for more than $500 million last July. At Playdom, Walton has picked up the title of vice president and executive producer, having been charged with heading up the casual game maker's new Austin studio.

"With great thanks and appreciation, we say goodbye to Gordon Walton for helping bring Star Wars: The Old Republic to the phenomenal state it is in today," EA said in a statement. "Rich Vogel remains the executive producer and VP of production, while Greg Zeschuk continues to oversee the entire project as general manager along with Ray Muzyka as BioWare Group general manager, and we remain confident that the game will excite and delight players worldwide."

EA went on to note that "it is business as usual at all BioWare studios."

For more information, check out GameSpot's previous coverage of Star Wars: The Old Republic.