Trion Worlds hit with lay-offs, original numbers "grossly exaggerated," says rep

Trion Worlds has laid off as many as 100 employees, according to various sources on the net. Some say the lay-off count is as high as 80% - a percentage Trion states is "grossly exaggerated."

IGN states it heard some senior leaders from various Trion teams "may not receive severance due to undelivered services," even.

Kotaku, which reports the percentage to be around 70%, reached out to the firm and was given the following response:

"To best position Trion in a rapidly changing industry, we have reorganized our teams and are expanding our free to play offering. With Defiance, we delivered a great game that more than one million gamers registered to play and continue to enjoy.

"As we progress from launch to ongoing development of the game, we are adjusting our staffing levels to deliver new content and improved features.

"RIFT, and our other titles in development, were unaffected by these changes. We are very much looking forward to the free to play release of RIFT and are excited by the other new titles currently in development."

A Trion representative has told Massively that the number of reported employees affected has been "grossly exaggerated," and further stated that no employee was escorted from the building, nor were any developers denied severance as per IGN's source.

The Rift team remained unaffected by the redundancies.

Trion announced earlier this week RIFT would get a free-to-play option in June, and last week it was announced the MMO Defiance would be getting a TV series specific update, along with the news SyFy had renewed it for a second season.