Major layoffs at Trion Worlds (Defiance dev only?)

[phenix]

http://www.gamespot.com/news/major-l...report-6408548

Defiance developer Trion Worlds enacted a round of major layoffs today, according to sources speaking with IGN. The site has heard that as much as 80 percent of the company has been let go.

The bulk of the layoffs reportedly came at Trion Worlds' San Diego, California outfit, where Defiance is in development. A source added that senior leaders may not receive severance packages due to "undelivered services."

The layoff rumors come a week after SyFy ordered a second season of Defiance the TV show and Trion Worlds laid out extensive downloadable content plans for the game.

Defiance has more than 1 million registered players.

Trion Worlds also has US offices in Redwood Shores, California and Austin, Texas. In addition, the company operates a studio in London, England.

Trion Worlds could not be reached for comment at press time.

In addition to Defiance, Trion Worlds is currently developing End of Nations and fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game Rift, which will go free-to-play next month. The company is also co-developing Warface with Crytek.


Dont know much about Rift/Trion Worlds but was probably going to play the 'trial version' soon and level up for the opening of F2P. Will any of these layoffs have an impact on the Rift side or only Defiance?

[Edge-]

Apparently the Rift team is at a movie and wasn't hit at all as per the livestream. Dagler (I think it was him) confirmed.

[RoninaThorstone]

Wow... Defiance was a worse idea than I thought.

I hope they find jobs quickly.
I wonder what this means for the show...

(This explains the email about a weekend sale on defiance though lol)

[Harnace]

So 80% of the Defiance team is gone? The future is not bright for Defiance

[Edge-]

So 80% of the Defiance team is gone? This does not look good for the game

Rumored. Trion says the numbers are "greatly exaggerated", but the team still took a big hit. It's unfortunate to see another game launch with unreasonable sales expectations, leading to layoffs : (

[notorious98]

Wow... Defiance was a worse idea than I thought.

I hope they find jobs quickly.
I wonder what this means for the show...

(This explains the email about a weekend sale on defiance though lol)

Apparently the show has already been picked up for a second season. So it likely means nothing for them.

---------- Post added 2013-05-17 at 05:36 PM ----------

So 80% of the Defiance team is gone? The future is not bright for Defiance

It doesn't say that Defiance was hit with all the layoffs. It says the "Defiance Dev", meaning Trion. Since Defiance is its most recent endeavor, it only makes sense to call them that.

---------- Post added 2013-05-17 at 05:37 PM ----------

Dagler (I think it was him) confirmed.

That he did.

[Harnace]

Yeah they said the game and show is not dependant on each other, so if the game "fails" nothing will happend to the show.

[theWocky]

Weird the way so many game companies are having these occurrences.

Kingdoms of Amular is another game that comes to mind that this happened to recently.

Personally, although I enjoyed the Defiance beta, it was a 6/10 game at best in my opinion -needed a lot of polish, haven't been too keen on playing the Defiance game in depth, also didn't like End of Nations, the Rift idea will probably sustain them. I have high hopes for that.

Actually, the sudden influx of players into the game - even before it has gone F2P is a no-brainer. I would say at least 15~25% more people are playing and this is just on the announcement of it going F2P

I think a lot of people want a game with a fresh look, good story, similar gameplay to WoW, and "no risk" to play. It's why I started playing Rift.

[Puremallace]

Doubt it is Defiance. Possibly the team still on End of Nations trying to recover that game. Daglar confirmed this did not affect Rift

http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-gene...layoffs-2.html

[RoninaThorstone]

I really liked End of Nations. There is actually some movement in it's development http://forums.endofnations.com/end-n...san-diego.html
Signs of life... but not much other than that.
I suspect we will see an alpha / beta soonish?

[Dorfadin]

Not surprised of all the lay-offs Defiance is barely in the top 300 rank on x-fire and Rift is just in the top 100.

[Arkamenitas]

post launch or post expansions layoffs are nothing new or different. that said i would expect those numbers to be rather inflated by media

[RoninaThorstone]

post launch or post expansions layoffs are nothing new or different. that said i would expect those numbers to be rather inflated by media

Defiance didn't make an expansion.
Also, the SL lay offs were months ago.

[Arkamenitas]

post launch or post expansions layoffs are nothing new or different. that said i would expect those numbers to be rather inflated by media

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[RoninaThorstone]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Fair enough.

I blame it on NWO distracting me with queues.

[Slipmat]

Rift is just in the top 100.

Pfft, x-fire, all the 'kool kids' are on raptr and Rift is number 3



As for the story, it "broke" first on IGN an extremely reliable source of info, as the catch phrase says can't spell ignorance without IGN.

Stories of employees been escorted off the property,people not going to receive severance pay, 80% of the staff gone, surprised they didn't say a SWAT team was on standby.

Received a dozen tweets and retweets last night from people affected, funny how they didn't mention been escorted out or receiving no severance, quite the opposite

[Drakoes]

Pfft, x-fire, all the 'kool kids' are on raptr and Rift is number 3

It might be worth noting that those statistics may potentially be flawed. A lot of people (including myself) may just be doing the promotion that ratpr has been offering, leaving the game afk on the character selection screen.

Also, lets not forget that raptr's data is only a very small representation of players from other games (twitch tends to be a good one for seeing what's hot nowadays imo).

[Edge-]

As for the story, it "broke" first on IGN an extremely reliable source of info, as the catch phrase says can't spell ignorance without IGN.

Hating on IGN for this is pointless. This is standard practice for every gaming news site. When they spot people talking about layoffs on social media and have those laid off reaching out to them, they write a story about it. They don't claim it to be 100% fact (something IGN didn't do either), but they do cover it. IGN, like every other gaming news site, updated the article with the official statement from Trion afterwards.

They reported what they initially heard. That's what all gaming news sites do. I know it's trendy and popular to hate IGN and that they aren't the best, but this is hardly something to really single them out about.

[notorious98]

It might be worth noting that those statistics may potentially be flawed. A lot of people (including myself) may just be doing the promotion that ratpr has been offering, leaving the game afk on the character selection screen.

Also, lets not forget that raptr's data is only a very small representation of players from other games (twitch tends to be a good one for seeing what's hot nowadays imo).

The same can be said for x-fire. Either of them are pretty limited strawmen and not indicative of any actual numbers. I think the point is that there is no reliable source.

[Fluffygong]

Don't think this has been mentioned yet, but in any company you'll hire extra people to meet a deadline and then get rid of them once they're no longer needed.

SL Launch coming up, lots of work to do, they hired more people. Released Sl, ran a couple of bug fix hotfixxes, got rid of the extra staff.
Defiance launch coming up, lots of work to do, they hired more people. Released Defiance, ran a couple of bug fix hotfixxes, got rid of the extra staff.

Any company does this to cope with short term work load increases. Some hire other companies or studios to help so they don't "lay off" anyone, they just use staff where they need them and then stop paying them when they don't need them.

If you hire a team to renovate your house, you don't keep them on once the renivation is complete and you're happy with it.