Tag: Trion Worlds

IPE Update: Trion Worlds Lawsuit Coming To A Close As Parties Agree On Settlement


(Update 8/10/19: Included some background information on the case for those who might not be as familiar)

It’s finally over, folks. After nearly four years in court, the Trion Worlds lawsuit may finally be reaching its final days.

Earlier this month in the superior court of San Mateo, California, dockets have been submitted to the court offering notice that the parties involved in the lawsuit have agreed in principle to settle the case. According to court filings, the terms of the settlement have not yet been documented, but will be coming in the near future.

It is also worth noting that payment for the settlement will come from Navigators Insurance Company, the insurer for Trion Worlds, and Trion Worlds will be dismissed from liability for the claims.

Plaintiffs and Navigators Insurance Company, the insurer for the officers and directors of Defendant Trion Worlds, Inc., have reached an agreement in principle to settle this case on class wide basis. The proposed settlement will provide for notice to the class members of the proposed settlement, payments to members of the proposed settlement class who file claims, and will release Defendant Trion Worlds, Inc. from liability for the claims asserted in this action. The parties are working to document all of the terms of the settlement.

At some point there will be notification for members of the class who will be eligible for compensation.

Four years ago, Aaron Van Fleet and Paul Ovberg along with other plaintiffs filed suit against Trion Worlds regarding their publishing of the game ArcheAge. The lawsuit alleged false advertising regarding pre-release advertising offering a 10% discount on cash shop purchases for subscribers. That 10% discount was later retroactively scrubbed from press releases and ultimately was scrapped entirely, with Trion Worlds replacing the deal with a 10% bonus on all gem purchases that did not extend to a number of customers that would otherwise be covered by the discount on shop purchases. The lawsuit also claimed that Trion’s loot box system violated California penal code against illegal lottery.

Since then, Trion Worlds has virtually gone bust with the company transferring its assets to another Trion Worlds and then selling off those assets to Gamigo. Their defense of this lawsuit has been primarily funded from liability insurance.

As always, dockets cited will be available in the MMO Fallout Google Drive. This file is labeled “settlement.pdf”. MMO Fallout will keep a closer eye on the lawsuit and update as new information becomes available.

Atlas Reactor No Longer Sustainable, Will Shut Down


Trion World’s title Atlas Reactor will sunset on June 28, 2019. The title was launched in 2016 under Trion Worlds and transferred along with Trion’s other assets to Gamigo when the company suddenly shut down last year.

Mervin Lee Kwai, Vice President of Development at gamigo and a former Executive Producer: “Atlas Reactor was a truly innovative game built by a passionate group of highly skilled developers. I was lucky enough to watch our team breathe life into the world of Atlas on a daily basis. They broke the mold of same-y games, and a dedicated community rallied around the title. Despite the support of this great group of fans, Atlas Reactor never grew big enough to fund its continued development. It’s a shame to see this chapter come to a close, but perhaps we’ll have a chance to revisit the innovative spirit of Atlas in the future.”

As part of the shut down, players who logged in between January 1 and April 16 will receive a small parting gift. The cash shop has been shut down and experience, flux, and ISO rates have been boosted dramatically for the duration of the game’s life.

Source: Atlas Reactor

IPE Update: Settlement Negotiations and Sanctions Ahoy!


On the last episode of In Plain English: Trion Worlds was issued a subpoena to produce information regarding the sale of assets to Gamigo, we learned about Golden Gate Games Inc, another entity that may possess some of Trion’s assets and whom the plaintiff intended on serving with deposition paperwork and possibly add as a defendant. The next conference was set for March 15.

Well you can throw that out the window, because it looks like we’ve taken a sharp (and predictable) left hand turn into settlement territory. The March 15 discovery conference and case management conference were both vacated with a 60-day delay to discovery, and a delay in the motion for class certification. Why the sudden cancellations and delays? The parties are seeking settlement negotiations.

“Counsel indicated that they have no pending discovery disputes, and that they jointly stipulate to 60 day stay of discovery, and delay in bringing the motion for class certification, in order to facilitate settlement negotiation.”

This isn’t too surprising, considering 97% of civil cases are settled before they even go to trial. It looks like Aaron Van Fleet’s crew are discussing negotiations with Trion’s insurer because the company’s insurance policy is literally the best remaining asset.

“On March 7, 2019, Plaintiffs’ counsel had preliminary discussion With counsel for Trion’s Directors and Officers Liability insurer. Trion’s Directors and Officers Liability insurance policy appears to be Trion’s most significant remaining asset. The policy is depleted by defense costs. The parties have agreed to explore potential resolution of the matter. Plaintiffs
request sixty-day stay of discovery between the parties (Plaintiffs and Trion Worlds, Inc.), so that the parties may explore potential resolution Without fithher depleting the limited resource potentially available to satisfy the claims of Plaintiffs and the proposed class. Trion agrees that sixty-day stay of discovery is appropriate.”

On the lawsuit side, the plaintiff’s lawyers have still been attempting to serve subpoenas to Golden Gate Games and Gamigo, evidently having no luck in either field.

“Plaintiffs have been unable to serve With subpoenas either Golden Gate Games, Inc. or Gamigo. They have not completed their investigation of whether to add either entity to the case, but do not anticipate doing so at this point. As discussed below, the parties have had preliminary discussion regarding potential resolution of the case. If those efforts are unsuccessful, Plaintiffs will make final determination about adding additional parties in advance of the next Case Management Conference.”

In other news, the plaintiffs are not happy at all with how Trion Worlds has been handing over requested documents, by which I mean how they have been refusing to hand over documents. Trion has allegedly been passing the buck on providing documents related to the illegal lottery, instead pointing to either Gamigo or the Trion shell that the assets were initially transferred over to. Due to Trion’s lack of cooperation, the plaintiffs are giving serious consideration to filing a motion for sanctions for failure to preserve documents despite having filed those requests nearly three years ago. If the sanctions are approved, it would be bad news for Trion and their legal team.

In fact, it seems like Trion Worlds is just in general refusing to cooperate. Trion’s council believes that the documents that the plaintiff have requested may be in the possession of Trion ABC or Gamigo. As for how to get in contact with Gamigo, Trion has so far not provided any information. Virtually every piece of documentation that Trion Worlds objected to was under claims that it was overly broad, vague, and oppressive, or violated attorney-client privilege.

As always, if you want to check out the dockets you can do so at the MMO Fallout Google Drive. If you’re hoping that this lawsuit doesn’t end up in a settlement, I would probably curb your expectations now. Especially with the insurance company taking over negotiations.

Rift’s Progression Server Is Dead, Sunsetting At End of Month


Rift’s progression server experiment is coming to a premature end. As posted on the official forums, Rift’s progression server will come down on March 31 with character transfers occurring the following week.

As part of the sunset, all accounts with a level 50 character on Prime will be receive a level 65 character boost pack as well as one million loyalty points. Unfortunately if you’re at capacity for characters on the live servers, you’re going to have to decide who is getting deleted.

The decision may not surprise Rift players, as one can find multiple threads on the main forum discussing low population on the Rift Prime server.

Source: Rift

IPE (Minor) Update: Trion Worlds Lawsuit As Of January 30, 2019


I’ve been holding off on the Trion Worlds lawsuit coverage for the simple fact that not a whole lot has been happening over the past couple of months, at least nothing of major significance. Right now the case is getting to the end of discovery, this is the portion of the lawsuit where the parties finish up requesting and handing over documents that will be used in the coming trial. To spare you the reader from boredom, I have kindly summarized the last few case management conferences into one sentence: “Information was requested, other information may be requested, we will let you know at the next conference, and class action status is still pending.”

You’re welcome. Now on with the meat of the latest filings:

The Asset Transfer, Or, A New Defendant

If you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing story of Trion Worlds, you’ll know that the company is virtually nonexistent at this point. Last October, Trion transferred its assets and property to Trion Worlds LLC, which subsequently sold said assets to Gamigo. Trion Worlds LLC was issued a subpoena to produce information regarding the transaction and has since turned over an Asset Purchase Agreement and related documents.

The documents have shined light on another entity that may currently possess Trion assets: Golden Gate Games Inc. The plaintiffs not only intend to serve Golden Gate Games with documents and deposition subpoenas, but also have noted their intent to investigate whether individual officers/owners of Trion may be liable to plaintiffs and the proposed class action lawsuit as part of the asset transfer. The document also notes that plaintiffs have been unable to serve Gamigo with subpoenas.

As far as Trion Worlds is concerned, all non-privileged responsive documents have been produced. Trion has not sought any discovery information from the Plaintiffs according to court filings.

What Are We Waiting For?

For the moment, we are waiting to see whether the plaintiffs in the case will be adding an additional party or parties to the defense which will be known within the next two months. The next case management conference is not set until March 15, during which the parties will discuss the ongoing motion to certify the lawsuit for class action status. A request to compel documents pertaining to ArcheAge’s financial information has been deferred for the time being as unnecessary for class certification, however there is the possibility that we will be made privy to the details of Trion’s asset sale to Gamigo at some point in this lawsuit.

Again, there hasn’t been much development over the past two months, and there won’t be for another couple of months to come.

As always, the documents related to the case have been made available on the MMO Fallout Google Drive folder for your use.

Trion Worlds Tells Court: Company Disbanded, All Employees Terminated


(Update 10/31/18): Files from a case management conference held on 10/26 have been published. It looks like the council will continue discussing a plan of action moving forward. A CMC has been scheduled for November 19, and we will post an updated piece should anything important be confirmed.

The new document has been uploaded to the Google Drive folder linked at the end of the article.

“The situation was discussed in general among counsel and the Court, and it was agreed that counsel would continue to discuss the situation to keep up to date and formulate plan of action for this case under the circumstances. Defense counsel agreed to seek approval of the Defendant client to provide information about the subject transactions to Plaintiffs’ counsel under confidentiality order. It was agreed to defer setting of class certification, and discovery plan until the next CMC.”

Original Story: One week ago, we learned that Trion Worlds had been acquired by Gamigo with at least 75% of the staff laid off. MMO Fallout has come across a document filed with the San Mateo County Court on October 26 describing that Trion Worlds has disbanded, all of its employees have been terminated, and its directors are gone.

Defendant’s counsel reporter that Trion Worlds has suddenly disbanded this week. All assets and
property were assigned to Trion Worlds (ABC) LLC, and they proceeded to sell the assets and intellectual
property to others, particularly Gamigo, a Germany-based game publisher. All of the employees of Trion
have been terminated effective October 22, 2018, i.e. immediately upon the announcement, and its
directors and officers are gone and the company will be dissolved.

In another case management conference statement filed October 25, Trion’s lawyers noted that they themselves were not aware of the transfer or dissolution until October 18.

Defense counsel first became aware on October 18, 2018 of the transfer of assets of TWI to take place on October 22, 2018 and the corporate dissolution of TWI to follow shortly thereafter. Defense counsel has been actively investigating and assessing since that time the status of TWI-ABC with respect to the claims presented in this action.

Lawyers for the former Trion Worlds have requested a 14 day continuance in order to allow the defense to advise the court and plaintiffs on the impact of the dissolution.

As always, MMO Fallout has made the dockets available via Google Drive at the link below.

(Source: Google Drive)

XLGames Resolving Unspecified Issues Regarding Trion Worlds Buyout


Rev up the rumor mill.

In a surprising bit of news, XLGames has posted an announcement on the ArcheAge forums announcing that the 5.0 update release date is still being decided, and that the company is currently working to resolve some issues that have popped up in the recent acquisition of Trion Worlds by Gamigo. The 5.0 update was slated to launch today, with the announcement coming late yesterday afternoon that it would be delayed.

The full message has been placed below.

Dear ArcheAge players,

You may be aware that there has been a business transaction involving Trion Worlds. XLGAMES is currently resolving issues to ensure that there is no harm done to the users since our ArcheAge fans are of the utmost importance to us.

XLGAMES will do its best to settle any matters with the involved parties in a speedy manner. The release date of the Relics of Hiram 5.0 Update will be decided and notified to you soon.

Thank you for your support.

-XLGAMES Team

Gamigo Buys Trion Worlds, Immediately Fires Most Of Company


Trion Worlds has been purchased by MMO publisher Gamigo, a story that might come off as a little more positive if it weren’t for the fact that they also sealed the deal by firing most of the company’s staff. According to a statement obtained by Gamasutra from an inside source, only 25 employees are remaining of the over 200 that Trion had previously employed.

“A source speaking to Gamasutra, however, has indicated that those layoffs may have affected the vast majority of the studio. According to that source, only 25 or so employees were given the opportunity to continue on with the studio.”

The Trion Worlds team has posted the following statement to the press and their community:

Greetings — We can confirm that there has been a transaction involving Trion Worlds and its games.

While many of the names and faces you’ve come to know in our studios will remain on through this transition, others will not be making the journey. To those who are leaving us, we are forever grateful for your incredible work and contributions over the years.

We’d like to assure our communities that the games will continue on in capable hands moving forward, as everyone involved is aiming to make this transition as smooth as possible for you. We will have more information to reveal as soon as we possibly can.

From the bottom of all of our hearts, we thank you for your time and dedication to our games and hope that you’ve enjoyed the experience as much as we have. From spending time with you in game, to seeing you at conventions, to talking with you on livestreams and forums, it’s been our pleasure to be a part of this exceptional community with you since our first launch more than seven years ago.
Please know that you have our deepest gratitude. As for our games, we hope you continue to enjoy playing them far into the future!

The Trion Worlds Team

IPE Update: Trion Worlds Overruled, Receives Warning Over Procedural Violations


Who would have thought we’d be talking about Trion Worlds using incorrect font sizes?

It’s Thursday, and that means it’s time for an update on the case of Van Fleet v Trion Worlds, an active lawsuit in San Mateo County Court that seeks class action status regarding two major offenses: That Trion Worlds misled customers by offering a 10% discount and then did not follow through, and the question on whether or not lockboxes in ArcheAge constitute an illegal lottery.

If you need more backstory, go here. For the rest, let’s move on.

You may recall in the last episode of In Plain English, Trion Worlds had filed a demurrer (that’s a motion to dismiss) against the claims of illegal lottery and notably not the claims of misleading advertising, with a court hearing scheduled for August 23. The notes from the hearing have just become available, so let’s go through them.

To keep the story short, both demurrers filed by Trion Worlds on the basis of standing and failing to allege facts have been overruled by the court. The real meat and potatoes of this story resides in the fact that Judge Weiner had some comments regarding improper procedure by Trion Worlds lawyers.

The judge accuses Trion’s lawyers of skirting statutory page limitations via over-use of footnotes, and that the footnotes were not in 12-point font as required by law. It may seem like a small error from the outside looking in, but the courts take these procedures seriously enough that Judge Weiner threatened to strike down future briefs that do not adhere to procedural statutory laws.

Judge Weiner went even further by striking Trion’s evidence as being improperly submitted. Trion Worlds submitted with its demurrer screenshots and information from ArcheAge, and did not formally request judicial notice. Trion’s request for judicial notice regarding its End User License Agreement was denied.

“Judicial notice is a rule in the law of evidence that allows a fact to be introduced into evidence if the truth of that fact is so notorious or well known, or so authoritatively attested, that it cannot reasonably be doubted. This is done upon the request of the party seeking to rely on the fact at issue.”

In its pleadings, Trion also attempted to convert the demurrer (motion to dismiss) into a summary adjudication, essentially asking the judge to make a ruling without going to trial. The court declined to do so.

So where do we stand now? Trion Worlds has until September 17 to file its answer to the First Amended Complaint, after which a Case Management Conference will be held on October 26 where the parties will discuss status of discovery, status of settlement or mediation, any other possible motions, as well as the date of the following CMC, plus any other matters pertinent to the case.

Parties will also discuss the status of the lawsuit class action certification, including any further research needed to support or deny such a claim.

I have uploaded a copy of the Case Management Order to the MMO Fallout Google Drive, linked below.

(Source: Docket)

IPE Update: Class Action Lawsuit v. Trion Worlds Responds To Amended Complaint


It’s been quite a while since we last checked in on the ArcheAge class action lawsuit, so I figured we’d go ahead and see if anything has changed over the past few months.

First, a recap for those keeping score. Back in what feels like the far flung past of September 2015, two individuals by the names of Aaron Van Fleet and Paul Ovberg launched a lawsuit against Trion Worlds regarding ArcheAge. It’s probably irrelevant to most readers, but noteworthy that they didn’t “launch” a class action lawsuit but filed a lawsuit and are seeking class action status that won’t be ruled on until 2019, just an oversight that a lot of people (including myself) probably haven’t made clear.

The plaintiffs were willing to admit under oath that they had purchased the $149.99 collector’s edition of ArcheAge, and are now suing for a myriad of reasons including the infamous 10% discount and allegations that ArcheAge’s lootbox system violates California law on illegal lotteries.

In my initial discussion on the lawsuit, I noted my doubts that the lottery claims would hold up and that the plaintiffs might be damaging their case by including their exhibit A (and only exhibit) as 50 pages of random players complaining in the forums about loot boxes. Trion Worlds attempted to have the lawsuit moved to arbitration and lost, appealed their case to the First District Court of Appeals…and also lost there. Then the lawsuit went back to the San Mateo County Court and the plaintiffs were given an opportunity to file an amended complaint.

Well they’ve filed their amended complaint and of all that has changed, well, there isn’t much of it. James Longfield has been named as a plaintiff, the screenshots are of much higher quality in the copy available on the court’s website. Apart from one sentence that is changed from present tense to past tense, this is exactly the same complaint, word for word. Nothing outside of the addition of a new plaintiff has been amended in this amended complaint.

Which means that the lawsuit’s pitfalls are still there. The plaintiffs make virtually no attempt to show how Trion’s loot boxes violate the lottery penal code, nor does it actually explain the penal code in any real capacity, an oversight to be sure since it’s basically a large portion of the lawsuit. As far as I could find in the docket, they didn’t even bother citing the penal code that they are attempting to prove violation of. I noted the California lottery penal code in my previous article, the plaintiff apparently didn’t bother and still has not done so. There is also the matter of the 50 pages of forum complaints that are hardly relevant to the case at hand and basically come down to players musing the idea that “this is probably illegal because I don’t like it.”

Trion Worlds has filed a demurer, an objection that questions the validity of the plaintiff’s claims, and unsurprisingly it mostly targets the question of the illegal lottery claim. The demurer mostly attacks on the basis that items obtained in ArcheAge have no measurable value, and thus can not be covered by the penal code definition of property. In addition, Trion argues against the idea that the plaintiffs can claim that they lost money or property, as they exchanged real money for digital goods and received exactly what they paid for. Finally they attacked the lottery on the same merits that I did, that the plaintiffs didn’t really bother staking a claim on the rules of the penal code or how Trion even allegedly violated them.

Notably absent from Trion’s demurer is commentary in relation to whether or not the 10% discount offer change constituted misleading advertising, but presumably the demurer is to carve up the lawsuit and get rid of the extra fat so that the main points of contention can be handled either during the trial phase or in a supplementary demurer. Considering this lawsuit has now gone on for three years and has rulings and applications for various statuses dated for early to mid 2019, I’m sure Trion is just trying to bring this closer to some kind of resolution.

I have included a link to the docket down below, thankfully San Mateo’s county court allows you to view their dockets at no cost. MMO Fallout will continue covering this lawsuit when any noteworthy events happen.

(Source: San Mateo Docket)