Gamigo’s silence on Rift speaks volumes.
If there is one thing I’ve learned about business over the years, it’s that you can learn a whole lot more from a company’s silence than you can from the things they actually say. Because businesses can and will lie by omission in order to save face. For instance in yonder olden days of 2010-2013, the easiest way to tell if NCSoft was preparing to shut down an MMO would be if they stopped referring to it by name in their quarterly financial results.
Gamigo is doing the same thing with Rift. It’s been a month since I said Rift is totally getting shut down. I had good reason to speculate such; the team got fired and Gamigo’s explanation was for lack of better words terrible. The compensation packages for Gamigo’s soon to be retired products does not include Rift, Gamigo couldn’t bring itself to reference Rift during the last financial report, and the company has been asking players to address concerns through private channels instead of openly in the public space.
You know what did get referenced in Gamigo’s last report? Twin Saga.
During Q3 2020, gamigo invested 3.0 mEUR (Q3 2019: 2.1 mEUR) in strategic product and platform development (personnel expenses). Capitalized own work includes investments in the optimization of the IT platform as well as enhancements and updates to existing games such as Trove, ArcheAge, Twin Saga and Aura Kingdom. As a percentage of net revenues, these investments amounted to 14% in Q3 2020 compared to 15% in Q3 2019.
Twin Saga got a direct mention in Gamigo’s quarterly report, and that game is shutting down this month as financially unsustainable. What does that say for Rift that can’t even get a footnote?
Over the weekend Gamigo published a list of times for when the Defiance servers will go offline. One thing you might notice is that Rift once again got the cold shoulder when it comes to Gamigo advertising their library.
While it can be hard to say goodbye, keep in mind there are ton of awesome games available for free to play and enjoy, and we invite you to check out some of our other gamigo games such as Trove, Desert Operations, ArcheAge or ArcheAge: Unchained.
What does get mentioned? Desert Operations. Yea, a browser city builder that Gamigo put so little effort into that they couldn’t be bothered using English screenshots on the English landing page gets top billing over Rift.
Gamigo claims Rift is contributing a “great deal” to the studio, and we know that great contributions are regularly rewarded with crippling layoffs and lack of acknowledgement. Rift means so much to Gamigo that maybe they forgot to suggest that Defiance players go check it out. Their vision was blinded by the overwhelming caring. Because they care just too much.
Rift is totally shutting down.
MMO Fallout 