Layoffs hit TRION and the Defiance team

It’s time for another round of layoffs at developer TRION who issued a statement this evening following rumours that surfaced on IGN.

With Defiance now out the door and RIFT about to go free to play, TRION appear to be scaling back their workforce with most of the casualties coming from the Defiance team. The statement from TRION reads:

To best position Trion in a rapidly changing industry, we have reorganized our teams and are expanding our free to play offering. 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 the game, we are adjusting our staffing levels to deliver new content and improved features. 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.

Staff cuts are  the norm these days, once the game has shipped the workers are scaled right back to a team that can provide support and continue with smaller content updates. TRION has not revealed how many staff have been let go today.

This is the latest round of redundancies at the developer following cuts back in December from the RIFT team. The recently released Defiance game has had a mixed reception but the TV show was recently renewed for a second season so there’s at least an incentive to keep developing new content for the game.