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Rift: Dev Team Rocked By Layoffs
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Gamasutra is reporting that several affected persons have been in contact indicating that Trion Worlds is undergoing "staff reductions". Most notably, sources indicate that the Rift team has been hit hard.
An affected source tells us that the number of developers out of work today -- developers spanning several disciplines, including artists and designers -- numbers somewhere in the neighborhood of 40.
Read Gamasutra's full report.
Comments
figures, honestly the game has not got much advertisement excpecially with the new expansion that just came out, hardly much people have heard of it. they need to do something about attracting more people into their game or something.
Dissapointing considering how well the expansion has been recieved =/ I feel like maybe Trion bit off more then they can chew with the monthly updates and that did not help for production costs but alot of this probably has to do with End of Nations somehow i am thinking.. (Recently Trion brought it from a different company in house)
I hope this does not mean the calibur of updates will go down. They have done really awesome so far and other then possibly GW2, no one else has come close to the rate of content updates Rift has had.
Rift may be the last sub based MMO that warrants a sub...and it may fall to the zerg of MMOs that take a very long time to produce content, or produce the same content in the same amount of time in smaller bits and pieces and call it "more frequent content updates" (IE: WoW/SWTOR)
....Being Banned from MMORPG's forums since 2010, for Trolling the Trolls!!!
What I was thinking. It really sounds like Trion is letting go the extra staff needed to develop Storm Legion, but whom was also not needed to maintain it.
Seems like they decided to scale back after the expansion. It is a shame really, its the closest game to enjoyment I've had with a raiding to the point its given me the most memorable raidsm since WoW during TBC, particular Hammerknell which is hands down one of the best raids I've played in any MMO.
I really think they just went over their heads both pushing content out and trying to bite off more then they can chew game wise. For me, Rift is just a far better game then newer games trying to 'change it up'. Sure, Tera's combat is by far the best in any mmo I've played, it lacked so many other elements and Gw2... *cringe* well its just a wolf in sheep's clothing, the same thing we know looking just slightly different which I honestly feel you will NEVER change the way things are done completely.
I almost think Rift might go towards Freemium, and if it does I hope it does it in the right manor, not trying to milk people and instead making it a pleasurable experience. So long as subscribers get full benefits and a cash shop wouldn't try milking paying subscribers I'd have no problem with it. Its just a great MMo and while not perfect, for myself it has put my WoW play time to shame on my mains which is quite a difficult task considering the years I spent on it so long ago. Chances are the layoffs will primarily be the 'SL clean up' for the extras on the project but none the less its still rough since its likely taking of resources that could otherwise fuel more content additions.
The market is just super saturated with games to play right now. It's a shame but until the herd is thinned out companies are not going to be able to sustain these huge dev teams.
Also mmorpg's have gotten stale as hell. Last month I bought my first new console in over a decade. There I'm finding some actual challenge and enjoyment in the rpg's I'm trying out. When I pick up a game like GW2 or any mmorpg out in the last 5 years, I'll put 40 hours in and every piece of gear or level/skill feels so pointless and linear.
Get a game like Demon Souls or any random sub-par jrpg on a console and you have to scrounge for every point and gold piece. I love it. And if I'm going to spend hours jumping around on platforms I might as well just play Uncharted.
I hope to play Rift again this winter, it was pretty good when I played it at launch, but it always gets put off by the next 'big' release. Probably the game I should have just stuck with all along.
And this ultimately may have been what cost them. I know End of Nations wasnt their property until recently, but Rift was a moderate success at best and I think Trion spread themselves out too thin.
But that is the scary thing...if Rift team mebers are being laid off, that means they probably arent hiring new people. So where is the EoN dev team going to come from...
The irony of your comment with a SWTOR signature is pretty mindblowing. I would say Rift did quite well for itself and is (still) a stellar example of how a subscription based MMO should be run. Tons of content on a 1-2 month content patch cycle to get your money's worth. Something that other MMOs are ATTEMPTING to pick up on. The thing about Rift that makes it great is that these patches are just as big if not bigger then most of the biggest patches in other MMOs including the ones that recently switched to a faster cycle. SWTOR for example put out a new warzone,new raid,new daily quests (lol), and new space missions (lol) in a 12 week period. Rift introduces that sort of content every 4-6 weeks. It has been what, a month since SL came out and now Rift is getting the first major patch of the expansion which includes a big raid compared to the miniature raid added to SWTOR. Not to mention the fae yule event and new chronicle.
Regardless of the financial point Trion is at now, no one can argue that everyone wants tons of content in MMOs. Trion is and may be the only company that has ever provided this significant amount of content in such a short span of time.
This is a huge body blow to the staff that got laid off after their great work on Storm Legion. I hope they all find other employment soon. I sincerely hope it doesn't mean the rate of content released by Trion doesn't tank as well. While I think the stuff they've got is great, one of their biggest selling points is the lengths they go to justify having a subscription. If their notion of MMO-as-service has to be tempered, I foresee even tougher times for them.
As a side note, I have to wonder if the underperformance (impending cancellation?) of End of Nations has had a role to play in these layoffs. How much might Trion have staked on the game's income only to see it evaporate?
You're new around here, aren't you? ^^ This is nothing, you should see what happens when something really interesting happens. I've seen threads that go on for 40-50 pages on some of those. ^^
Notice that companies always do this just before Christmas at one of the most difficult times of the year to get a job?
Next time an employer tells you that you are the most valueable asset to the organisation and that they really value their employees don't believe a word of it.
They really don't give a toss.
The lesson here is DO NOT price expansions to struggling MMOs at $50.
and that's how the layoffs at bioware ausin and EME started out. look where they ended up though.
Trion says sales of it were phenominal though. They even managed to get 13% of the current subscriber base to drop $100 on the 1-year subscription bundle during pre-orders. Impressive for a "struggling" MMO.
http://www.thealistdaily.com/news/exclusive-trions-quest-never-ends/
getting your lifers to subscribe for a 1 year deal doesnt mean phenomonal sales.
I'm glad you found Thesaurus.com. This isn't necessarily a pure "doom and gloom" thread. If Trion has laid off a part of the Rift time, it will be reflected in how the game is managed. If they're willing to cut even with the success of the expansion, then what will stop them from cutting later in the future. Speculation can be fruitful.
I do hope that these cuts were a one-time deal and the Rift team can bounce back. I do plan on resubbing so I hope there's still a game to resub too when that time comes.
They only way there wont be a Rift is if all of Trion's other projects flop and they cant repay their investors. Rift is going to be around. Tough to imagine 1/3 of the team being laid off wont effect the release schedule though.
Trion said it, not me. Besides it's relative...if 13% of DAoC's subs drop $100 on it no big deal, but 13% of Rift's player base? Lifers or not that's alot of cash up front and we haven't even discussed retail boxes, nor preorders of the stand-alone expansion...just preorders with a 1 year commit.