Per the sale, Trion Worlds obtains all Gazillion licenses, trademarks, patents and domains, in addition to its library of games.
This acquisition builds on Trion Worlds’ role as a unique publishing partner capable of bolstering game developers in many key areas, including operations, networking, performance, security, player acquisition and analytics on a global scale. The growth of its technical capabilities via the Trion Glyph platform coupled with industry-leading experience in the creation and management of global online games puts Trion Worlds in a prime position to offer partners a best in class suite of support and infrastructure for their games.
The new technology and infrastructure gained through the acquisition will empower Trion Worlds to provide critical technology to outside teams looking to bring their games and ideas to fruition through its publishing and partnership programs. Developers using the Trion platform will have the resources and technology to substantially reduce the time of their development cycles and greatly expedite the creation of exciting new products.
“Gazillion was a great team with an incredibly talented staff that put a tremendous amount of effort into their creations. A number of our own worked there in the past,” said Scott Hartsman, CEO of Trion Worlds. “While we’re saddened that the company shut down, we feel fortunate to be in a position to give their hard work a new lease on life, and provide other developers with a great boost they may not get otherwise.”
The creator of free-to-play online titles like Trove, RIFT, and ArcheAge, Trion Worlds is a leader in online games publishing. Trove, its voxel MMO game, recently hit 17 million players worldwide and expanded into both China and Japan in less than a year’s time.
“We‘ve built an amazing ecosystem in support of our games and those we’ve published. We’re excited to add more tools to our library in order to embolden our teams and partners to create truly fantastic games,” said Hartsman. “Our suite of vital technology and experience in publishing and operation at a global scale allows us to provide essential ‘ecosystem as a service’ support, empowering developers from all over the world to create all new AAA online experiences, sustain their studios in very crowded markets, and take more creative risks.”
While Marvel Heroes went offline well over 6 months ago, in a recent interview Hartsman does give the tiniest glimmers of hope of a revival by saying Trion is open to having talks with former partners.
As for Marvel Heroes, Hartsman said, “As this deal just concluded, there’s still more investigation that needs to occur. What we do know is that the company’s live servers were gone prior to our discussions with them. We believe that the license agreement behind that game expired prior to our involvement as well. We’re open to having conversations with any former partners of theirs to discuss ways to bring great games to life. At this time, we are focused on using the acquired technology to enhance our ability to support our current and future development partners.”