Everything We Know So Far! Ghar Station Edition

Today’s summary post provided by Holyroller.  Thanks for your contributions!

I have been asked and given permission to post this overall information guide on TGS. I’ll try to compress and compile all of the information that has come out until this point. My other guide will still exist if you prefer that, but it will likely be further buried with all of the new information and announcements that come out from the new community managers.

The How and Why

The short version is that while individual games were likely doing well enough and meeting their goals, the company as a whole was in the red so investors made this deal instead to recoup their investments while also saving the company from having to file for bankruptcy. While everyone would like to believe that people higher up on the company made bank and left the rest hanging, in all likelihood (based on what people are finding) it seems to be quite the opposite. It was reported that employees had received severance and I have confirmed as much, but it wasn’t enough for those that were let go to live on while they look for new jobs.

Game Status and Content

This doesn’t just pertain to Rift, but on Day 1 we were already told that Gamigo (communicated through various devs that were still in office) that each game will carry on. There aren’t any plans to shut anything down and this was officially confirmed in Meet the new Community team!

As stated, each game will presumably be getting their own community manager on Monday. The post also addresses that they have every intention of continuing development for each game, but there are going to be some short term goals which is addressed in Rift Letter. The short term goals will be more quality of life changes and improvements until they get everything restructured and continue the transition to Gamigo internally. They’re also working on organizing more long term plans for continued development which again has been stated in the new community team post as the intention for each game.

 

Development Teams: Who’s left?

As many of you know, 150 or so employees were let go upon the acquisition of Trion Worlds by Gamigo and another 50 were offered new positions within the new company. In regard to Rift, I have confirmed from one of my sources that Gamigo retained several QA members (One per game). Prior to the acquisition, there were 4 full time designers+ Deadsimon who was the design director Rift, two engineers (Server and Gameplay | RR), three artists (one vfx, one animation, the other items/world) working primarily on Rift. Art was often overlapped.

Out of the 50 or so people that were offered positions, there are enough people for each game that know the systems well enough to both teach any new people going forward in the future those systems or can keep those systems running themselves for further development. Many Senior developers were offered new positions. Below you will find a list of confirmed developers that you may recognize. I originally separated them by each individual game, but it seems that many share rolls across multiple games so I’m simply going to list them all in one go:

• CM Morgana
• EPS
• Mr E (Designer | Producer 2 years ago)
• Tynaut (Gameplay engineer | UI someitmes)
• Habidakus (Server Engineer for all games | Mainly Trove)
• Fasti
• Khrolan
• Socke
• Applegod
• Tinen
• Clownie
• Shyguy
• Big Data Dude
• Archonix(?) – This one isn’t 100% confirmed, but he’s one of the few developers that hasn’t changed his linkedin whereas most of the other employees did that on day one and my sources eluded to him still being on board, but for the time being I’m keeping him as a non confirmation until I’m absolutely sure.

Holyroller posted some questions in the Rift letter post in hopes of getting this question answered: http://forums.riftgame.com/general-discussions/news-announcements/507273-rift-team-letter-november-8-2018-a.html#post5367793

 

Golden Gate Games

There’s been quite a few sites and youtube channels making click bait videos and article about how Trion has dissolved and is no more which has lead to a lot of confusion. We have posted a good summary on the situation and how Trion will likely be rebranding to Golden Gate Games. See: Trion Disbanded, likely rebuilt as Golden Gate Games

As of 11/9/2018 There have been no more updates on this specifics of this rebranding.

 

Gamer Tokens and Intentions

Outside of Gamigo’s intentions to continue development of all of Trion’s former games, it would seem that their real goal is to test a new crypto currency which is detailed in our post: Blockescense, Gamigo, and you

We have yet to hear anything official from Gamigo on this subject, but people over on TGS Discord have dug up lots of information and evidence pointing to this.  Gamigo has already implemented a Demo of Gamer Token using one of their games “Fiesta”.