Remember that time everyone made fun of Mass Effect 3 for having a ridiculously bad ending? How about the time we all criticized Star Wars: The Old Republic for taking World of Warcraft and replacing everything in it with stuff from Star Wars? As it turns out, those complaints had a very real effect on BioWare co-founders Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka. 

Trent Oster, who worked at BioWare through 2009 in “senior positions,” noted that at least one of the men seemed dejected and exhausted after the rough launch of the last two big titles.

“The last time I met up with [Greg], I felt his exhaustion. ‘Punch out, eject, get the hell out,’ was my suggestions to him and it hit closer to the mark than I had realized. I also think the Mass Effect 3 fan reaction and the Old Republic fans' negativity was just too much.”

"You have to love games and you put your heart into them to create them. To have the fans creating petitions against the work is pretty hard to take, especially when you've spent the last few years crunching overtime to try and ship a game. It can be hard to shut off the overwhelming negativity the internet spews forth, especially when it has your name or the name of your company in it.”

Oster did mention some surprise at Muzyka following suit, describing him as an “EA lifer.”

“I'm sure the internal culture at EA had pinned the Old Republic conversion to free to play as a failure and hung that completely on Ray, so that would have hurt his upward climb. But, I figured he would fight harder. EA upper management must have been even worse than I thought.”

Then again, it’s possible these two dudes were just ready to move on to something new. Thoughts?

[IGN]

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