Reports are coming out today that Trion Worlds, developer of RIFT and the recent MMO Defiance, have laid off over 100 of their staff meaning up to 80% of the company no longer works there anymore.
Trion Worlds have sent out a press release explaining the situation:
“To best position Trion in a rapidly changing industry, we have reorganized our teams and are expanding our free to play offering. With Defiance, we delivered a great game that more than one million gamers registered to play and continue to enjoy.
“As we progress from launch to ongoing development of the game, we are adjusting our staffing levels to deliver new content and improved features.
“RIFT, and our other titles in development, were unaffected by these changes. We are very much looking forward to the free to play release of RIFT and are excited by the other new titles currently in development.”
It is always a shame when so many people lose their jobs, although Defiance wasn’t the greatest game I had still heard generally good things about it, this means that a lot of talented people are out of work. I suppose there was always a huge risk when developing a TV show/MMO mix. Hopefully these people find somewhere new relatively soon and we’ll have to find out whether the development of RIFT will be unaffected by these losses, even though though say it will not.
Did you play Defiance? Let me know what you thought of the game in the comments below.
