15 layoffs this time around. While not specifically mentioned in this article, members of the ArcheAge team were part of this round including associate producer Seraphina “Celestrata” Brennan and community manager Joe “Muzzy” Brogno who left a message on the official forums that the 20th would be his final day. LIFO (last in, first out) at play here.
Clarification: while it looks like Muzzy has left on his own accord, just like with several past layoffs, personnel were given sufficient notice and thus given the opportunity to voluntarily resign (see below regarding the downsizing of the Devilian team). Those folks will obviously be vague because they do want to remain on good terms (considering how often paths are crossed in the industry) while seeking other opportunities.
CEO Hartsman denies this has anything to do with the performance of the individuals or Trion Worlds in general; what people need to do is read between the lines. This has to do with ArcheAge in general in terms of the revenues it is NOT generating (along with other metrics). Considering the game was launched in 2014, their licensing/publishing contract is coming up on the 5 year mark in 2019 (companies usually sign 3 or 5 year contracts). Renegotiations obviously has to begin before the contract expires.
This is similar to what happened with Devilian when its team was downsized around July 2016. Based on the contract expiration of the Thai publisher (3 years), Trion probably had the same deal. And if it weren’t for the Windows 10 issue, they probably would have milked things until that contract expired at the end of this year. My point in this however is that Trion is evaluating the renewal of their publishing contract with XLGAMES. Trion has learned a difficult lesson with their experiment of publishing third party titles from Korea (no control over the development, lip service, miscommunication due to language barrier).
In the linked 2016 downsizing article, associate producer Andrew “Drewcifer” Sipotz (was the unknown person) and community manager Sarah “Kiwibird” Walters were both going to be casualties though Walters was going to be given an opportunity to remain in some other (reduced?) capacity with the company; both voluntarily resigned. Senior producer Rick “Din Othar” White (now executive producer for Trove) transferred over to the then unreleased Atlas Reactor leaving only program manager Victoria “Firecait” Voss “running” Devilian (straight into the ground). Voss was also in charge of Trion’s third party publishing (which was why she was ArcheAge’s original executive producer). Her “signature” is all over Trion’s monetization though.
After I had posted my Devilian open letter to her back in late October, Voss was no longer with Trion after reply to me (she moved on to Roblox). Again, one needs to read between the lines regarding what has not been publicly stated; Trion is effectively moving away from the third party publishing (of already published Korean MMO’s). With Devilian closing earlier this year and ArcheAge slowly but surely heading down that same path (if Trion decides not to renew their publishing contract), there was no longer a need for someone like Voss.
Trion has been trying different things to generate revenues (like milking fresh start servers in ArcheAge, RIFT prime sub only progression server, “rebooting” Defiance as Defiance 2050 with the primary changes specifically to allow the game to run on Xbox One and PS4). Trove right now is where they are making money but diversification is a good thing so the company seems to be taking a dart board approach outside of that to see what sticks.
Trion’s “new” thing is trying to woo small/newer game developers to utilize Trion Worlds Glyph platform (which they’ll be augmenting using some tech from their acquisition of Gazillion’s IP). As I mentioned in that rant, it’s a pitch that isn’t much different than when they were looking to make themselves appear attractive as a publishing platform to games being developed in other countries. The way I look at it though is more in the vein of making a deal with the devil.
