Massive Layoffs At Trion Today? Defiance Affected?

[Shadow Andreas]

I forget, is denial step 1 or step 2 ?

I think 1

[Rainman]

Guess we will never see Freightyard now.

[Oberon]

Trion released an amazing game with Rift and I will be going back to play it when it goes f2p and I intend to support them in the online shop, but I only just played Defiance after 4 weeks and the only reason I did was the episode mission.

I am sad to see people loosing their jobs, but whoever was incharge of the vision of this game has miss the point. It has so much potential but.....it is missing something to make me feel like I am investing in my character.

I really hope the layoffs don't slow down an already slow pace for new content but this has happened to most MMOs that have launced in the last 2 years.....

[Schwa]

Kotaku says most of IGN's article is "shtako".



http://kotaku.com/big-layoffs-hit-th...rift-508295988

Right, so not as bad as the rumor says and not as trivial as the PR rep says. Who is PR.

That's a very large gulf in between the two. The fact that they let people go shows they broke tradition with the Rift launch, which is a poor sign of Defiance's performance as opposed to Rift's launch performance.

[T3CHN0Shaman]

Actually what I love is that all the sites say ">A< source' (emphasis mine). The didn't even wait for any sort of corroboration before posting this. That's bad journalism... the sort that can actually affect the company's bottom line. I'll wait for the company to say a little bit more on the subject before deciding 'what it means', thanks. (Yes, I know they've now corroborated layoffs, but they haven't said to what extent or the reasoning behind it.)

[DaMaJaDiZ]

This along with the packet deal that Amazon got for NBCUniversal shows (SyFy programming including Defiance as an Amazon Prime pickup) says the obvious. This little experiment produced enough data, and needs to be scaled back in expenses. Warehouse 13 is done with half of next season being the last, and they got shipped as well, and offloaded with Eureka. SyFy is already cashing in its chips and getting what it can while this little ship still has value. Expect that any broad changes to the show are going to diminish the likelihood of the games existence. This one won't survive in a void by itself.

[T3CHN0Shaman]

This along with the packet deal that Amazon got for SyFy programming (including Defiance) says the obvious. This little experiment produced enough data, and needs to be scaled back in expenses. SyFy is already cashing in its chips and getting what it can while this little ship still has value.

Profits for the SyFy show are independent from the game, and the death of the game wouldn't necessarily mean the death of the show so I'm not at all sure that qualifies as any sort of "evidence".

Also, as far as experiments go... there may be some novel elements here, but this is hardly the first time content for a game (or something else) has been presented across multiple forms of media. There's even a name for it (that I can't remember at the moment).

[Rei Oni]

IDK if it is business as usual or not. It seems to make sense that once you have released the final product of a game you wouldn't need those employees anymore but I've never worked in the game industry so I cant agree or disagree.

However, if the reason for layoffs is strictly financial, here are my 2 cents on the matter. F2P games rely on the store to help support them. Usually, when I find an MMO I like I support them by buying a few things from the store. I feel like I am doing what I can (since I can financially afford a few items here and there) to support patches and future content. I know not everyone can or wants to and I understand completely.

That being said, I have not bought one item from the Defiance store. I don't feel the items aren't worth the money. Prices seem a bit high to me and I can't bring myself to spend $10 on an outfit in another color. When they get a little bit more variety (and I'm sure they will) then I will be sinking money in to whatever interesting items they come up with.

[baelrusk]

Nope. Rift's free to play decision was made nearly a year ago and was being worked on for about the same amount of time. Rift had literally nothing to do with Defiance.

Well that's fine then.

[ten4]

IDK if it is business as usual or not. It seems to make sense that once you have released the final product of a game you wouldn't need those employees anymore but I've never worked in the game industry so I cant agree or disagree.

Uh this is being flaunted as an "MMO". MMOs are never 'done', they keep on developing and hopefully getting better. Er, that's how other MMOs work at least.

Now that they have gutted most of the Defiance team...well, this won't end well. You need people to evolve an MMO, successful ones start hiring...failed ones start firing.

So patches that come every 2-4 weeks will become months and PDLCs will be terrible from now on. Yay!