Rift and Trove developer Trion Worlds has been sold. The sale has also brought a round of layoffs to the MMO developer. Discord messages from developers suggest that Gamigo, a European MMO publisher, bought the company. Trion has yet to confirm who the buyer is.
An official statement on the Rift forums confirmed the news. Linda “Brasse” Carlson, director of community relations, did not name who bought the developer in that post, but noted that the games will go on. A Discord screenshot has been circulating on Reddit and in forums for many of Trion’s games. The screenshot is of a message from Carlson, which includes the Gamigo name, and news of layoffs. Carlson said, “a great many of us are packing to leave today.”
Gamasutra reports that Trion Worlds is facing “significant layoffs” following the acquisition. Their source indicates that most of the staff were laid off, and only about 25 employees were able to stay with the company. The developer has offices in Redwood City, California and Austin, Texas and both were affected by the layoffs. The layoffs affected the majority of Trion Worlds’ staff, which numbered more than 200 individuals.
Trion Worlds was founded in 2006 by former NCSoft employees Lars Buttler and Jon Van Caneghem. The studio released the MMORPG Rift in 2011 after it spent around five years in development. Rift was compared to World of Warcraft often, and its major claim to fame was large-scale PvP events. Trion also released Defiance (and now Defiance 2050) in collaboration with Syfy, as a tie-in to the show of the same name. Trion released Trove on PC in 2015, and then on PS4 and Xbox One in 2017. Trove has been well-received as a sandbox MMO with some building elements.
Gamigo currently publishes over 30 MMO titles, alongside hundreds of smaller titles. Gamigo has not confirmed the sale, although it is likely that they purchased Trion Worlds.
