As of November 15th, RIFT will have officially have taken its leave of the Asian markets. With the Korean servers already having been shut down earlier this year and the Chinese servers closing in two months, the game has been given a fair chance in the region and failed.
Despite publisher Shanda Games’ spending a hefty amount on marketing RIFT, the game has failed to draw and hold market interest in China. After about six months of struggling, Shanda Games is ready to let it go.
This is surely a disappointment to Trion Worlds, as just last year they had big ambitions for the game in China.
A trip back to the past on Gamasutra shows how optimistic they were giving Shanda Games the project. Shanda did pump a few million into marketing RIFT, keeping to their statement in the Gamasutra article that they would ‘work hard’ to market it the game in China. Unfortunately, that was not enough.
Trion Worlds themselves saw a studio closure last month. That in itself is not related to RIFT‘s situation in China, but they may have found themselves in a better situation if the game had taken off in other territories.
(Via MMO Culture)
