Trion Worlds recently launched online-shooter Defiance on PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. Now that the studio has that game out the door, it’s laying off some of its development staff.
Trion confirmed to GamesBeat that it is cutting jobs, as first reported by IGN.
“To best position Trion in a rapidly changing industry, we have reorganized our teams and are expanding our free-to-play offering,” a Trion spokesperson told GamesBeat. “With Defiance, we delivered a great game that more than one million gamers registered to play and continue to enjoy. As we progress from launch to ongoing development of [Defiance], we are adjusting our staffing levels to deliver new content and improved features.”
That new content won’t require the big team Trion had on hand to launch Defiance, which is a sci-fi shooter. Defiance is also a SyFy television program. The game and the show interconnect and affect one another.
Trion claims this move relates solely to the development cycle of Defiance and that these layoffs won’t have an impact on its other projects.
“Rift, and our other titles in development, were unaffected by these changes. We are very much looking forward to the free to play release of Rift and are excited by the other new titles currently in development.”
Rift is Trion’s subscription-based fantasy massively multiplayer online game. It is going free-to-play in June. Trion also has the real-time strategy MMO End of Nations in development, but it hasn’t revealed a release for that yet.