Players fear, German company kills their MMORPG Rift

The MMORPG Rift has been running since 2011 and was once intended as an alternative to WoW. Meanwhile, the game belongs to the German company Gamigo, which has just buried a series of MMORPGs. The fans of Rift fear: “We are the next.” However, a community manager reassures the fans.

What is going on with Rift? The MMORPG Rift was long the flagship of the MMO company Trion Worlds. “RIFT: Planes of Telara” launched in 2011 as a competitor to the popular WoW and was quite a hit at release. The game brought several features that are highly valued by MMORPG fans:

It has a clever class system
offers a clever “group” event with the Rifts
had a fair “Free2Play” payment model for years, starting in 2013
brought more cool features in housing and pets

Rift has always been considered a solid, “good” MMORPG, missing only that “certain something” to become a major hit. It was often criticized for being “too close to WoW” and not daring enough to be unique. However, Rift had many fans, especially at the beginning, and was a significant success for Trion Worlds during the great MMORPG wave.

But Rift could not maintain its success in the long term, and in recent years, the game has declined. The content became weaker, the payment model more stingy and the fans angrier.

Meanwhile, Rift is on our list of the “WoW killers that have been killed by WoW.” Even though it is not dead yet, the glory days of Rift are clearly over.

German company takes over Rift, treats it poorly

When did it start to decline? It wasn’t necessarily due to Rift, but Trion Worlds had a series of failures with new games and had to give up in 2018: The company was sold.

The games of Trion Worlds were ultimately taken over by the German company Gamigo. Their business policy consists of acquiring existing MMORPGs, saving costs through synergy effects and continuing to operate the games and make money with them.

That’s why Rift fans are worried: Even at the takeover of Trion Worlds, things did not look good for Rift. It was treated rather poorly and hardly mentioned anymore. Gamigo’s focus at that time was on the newer MMORPG ArcheAge and Trove. The focus is still on these two games today.

Moreover, Gamigo was recently on a “we are killing MMORPGs” trip. At the end of February, they killed three games they had previously bought, including Eden Eternal, Twin Saga, and the shooter Defiance. The latter also came from Trion Worlds and was only slightly better off in terms of profits than Rift.

When they shut down these MMOs, Gamigo encouraged their players to check out the other MMORPGs of the company, but only mentioned Trove and ArcheAge as alternatives. There was no word about Rift.

Additionally, the MMORPG site MassivelyOP reported new news: a source had tipped them off that several “Gamigo developers” in the USA had been laid off. Among them were two long-time and well-known Rift developers, Kerilar and Acalos.

“Are we the next?”

This is how the fans reacted: In the Rift forum, there were serious concerns from players that their MMORPG Rift is now “the next” to die.

There were rumors that the “stingy” German company Gamigo wanted to save more costs, had laid off developers in the USA, and planned to relocate the team to Europe.

The fear was exacerbated by the fact that for more than two weeks, no official appeared in the forum to make a statement. The opinion towards Gamigo is rather negative. A user said he feels they are stingy. Surely the employees are underpaid.

The fans then clung to statistics and numbers showing that Gamigo would not simply kill their MMORPG, as it had performed relatively well in the profit ranking. Defiance was running even worse and similar.

Gamigo gives a relatively non-specific all-clear

This is what Gamigo says now: In the end, the community manager has now made a brief statement. He said: There has indeed been an “internal restructuring”, which probably means that people were actually laid off.

However, they could not make it public.

It is said, however, that Rift will not be closed. And they assure the fans that “a team continues to work on Rift” – and also on further developments.

In an official statement to MassivelyOp, it further states:

Gamigo does not plan to relocate the development team to Europe
they want to continue to “work hard on the core MMORPGs”, but do not explicitly mention RIFT
they have “several new titles in the pipeline”
the layoffs are not as extensive as originally feared

This is what it’s about: For the existing players of Rift, this is a strange situation. They are clearly on a sinking ship, but it is not clear how fast it is sinking.

Gamigo’s communication suggests that people were laid off and that Rift is not at the top of the priority list anymore, but also not on the “death” list yet.

This is communicatively difficult for Gamigo: They need to give the impression that it is still worthwhile to invest money in Rift, but they cannot have high expectations, as this would make them look ridiculous. The fans already know that apparently nothing major is coming.

If Gamigo had not taken over the MMORPG Rift in 2018, the game would probably have been dead for 3 years, like other MMORPGs that could no longer find enough players and could not cover their operating costs.