Trion Worlds has officially acquired the assets of Marvel Heroes developer Gazillion Entertainment. The developer/publisher of games like MMO Rift and Minecraft-like Trove is planning to expand its games publishing with more MMO games. Gazillion Entertainment is best known for developing the now-defunct MMO game Marvel Heroes before unceremoniously shutting down last year due to unexpected problems.
In an interview with VentureBeat, Trion Worlds CEO Scot Hartsman reveals that the acquisition of Gazillion Entertainment includes all its licenses, trademarks, patents and domains, as well as its library of games. These tools will be used with Trion Worlds’ Trion Glyph platform to “provide support and infrastructure for online game world developers.”
Hartsman said: We‘ve built an amazing ecosystem in support of our games and those we’ve published. We’re excited to add more tools to our library in order to embolden our teams and partners to create truly fantastic games. Our suite of vital technology and experience in publishing and operation at a global scale allows us to provide essential ‘ecosystem as a service’ support, empowering developers from all over the world to create all new AAA online experiences, sustain their studios in very crowded markets, and take more creative risks.”
The Gazillion Entertainment assets also include a game engine that enables easier development of isometric games. However, Trion will still collaborate with game engine makers like Unity and Epic Games for the development of its future games. Last year, Gazillion Entertainment was shut down after parent company Disney announced that Marvel Heroes was going to be stop being supported by the end of the year.
The incident became worse when it was reported that Gazillion had abruptly laid off its entire staff without paying their severance or PTO. What’s even sadder was the fact that this happened right before Thanksgiving, which was a cruel turn of fate for the ex-employees of the company. Hopefully, they’re all doing better now months after the unfortunate incident.
