The last time I wrote about RIFT, it was to say a mental goodbye to a game that I figured was on its very last legs, being run by a company that was no longer promoting it or developing for it. But since then, two things of note have happened:
First, the game didn’t shut down as a lot of us were expecting. I mean, it still may. But after the layoffs this past spring and Gamigo shuttering Defiance, we all figured that was it. Yet it didn’t happen — it’s still running.
Second, in a recent investor report by Gamigo parent company MGI, an announcement was made about RIFT having “a first great update” in the first quarter of 2022. This raised ALL the eyebrows, not just because no further details were given, but because RIFT was mentioned at all and in a positive way. So now we have a ton of questions, such as
- Is Gamigo smarting from its loss of ArcheAge and investing more into its other MMOs?
- What does this update contain?
- Who’s actually developing it, as they laid off pretty much all of the devs (to my knowledge)?
One YouTuber speculated that this may even be a fresh start server or scenario for the game, although I can’t quite make this work in my head. If RIFT was to get an actual fresh start, it’d need to be with a new company and an established dev team.
But hey, new content is new content… and a very tiny sliver of hope where none was to be found previously. I’m not going to make much of it, other than keeping an eye on it and wishing RIFT the best. I’d love to one day come back to the game, but that’s only going to happen if I sense that there’s an actual future in it.
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