Trion Worlds has undergone yet another round of layoffs, a new report confirms. This follows layoffs in December, which largely affected the Rift team. According to sources speaking to IGN, "mostly Defiance support staff and dev staff" and "teams that provide generic responsibilities and services" have been let go.

It's unclear how many people were let go, but the report says that the bulk of the layoffs affect Trion's San Diego studio, where Defiance was developed.

Read more: Rift unaffected by layoffs »

Defiance, SyFy's ambitious TV show and video game hybrid, is continuing to pick up steam. The show has been picked up for a second season, while the game's first downloadable content has been revealed, assuring that both the game and show will continue into the foreseeable future.

Read more: Free and paid components in each DLC »

"So...what am I supposed to be doing?"

More than any other thought, this was the phrase that echoed through my mind during just about every moment of Defiance when I wasn't actively pursuing a quest. It's an MMO, but it doesn't include most of the tropes we've come to expect from the genre. Namely: a goal. In place of traditional elements like social interaction and leveling, we get a shooter sandbox that is extremely laissez faire about what you do with your time. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on what kind of player you are.

Read more: Lots of weapons and ammo »

Trion Worlds has already promised five downloadable content packs for Defiance, bundled as a Season Pass for $40. But since the game is an MMO at heart, it has to make some allowances for every player. A new blog entry explains where the free ends and the paid content begins, and offers some frank admissions about its server stability.

Read more: TV content and features free, races are paid »

The open-world shooter Defiance is expected to launch on April 2, and Trion Worlds is planning to put the game through its paces one last time with its final beta on March 22. It will be the third beta for PC players, but the first for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 users.

Read more: Invitations go out next week »

If it takes ambition to make an open-world game like Defiance, it takes a certain level of craziness to develop both a television show and a massively multiplayer game at the same time, especially when that game is targeting all major platforms. Even more so if you intend for them to premiere within weeks of each other. It's a credit to both SyFy and Trion Worlds that they appear to be on the verge of pulling off the launch of their respective parts of this multimedia experiment, both of which were on hand at a press event this week in San Francisco.

To get the background out of the way, the Defiance universe takes place in the year 2046, decades after a fleet of Votan ships entered Earth's orbit, with the aliens apparently thinking that our planet was ripe with emigration potential. After a lengthy period of negotiations, all of the ships in orbit were mysteriously destroyed, raining destruction on the Earth. The world was scarred and terraformed by the technology in the ships, and humanity and the Votan started a devastating war.

Read more: Sifting through Arkfalls »

Trion Worlds' upcoming MMO-ish persistent world shooter Defiance promises "no subscription required" to play. But, online games aren't cheap to sustain, and it should come as no surprise that there will be much more content to pay for beyond the game's standard $60 entry fee.

Read more: Five packs, $10 each »

"Defy everything you know about conventional storytelling." I can't recall the number of hyperbolic statements I overheard at a recent preview event for Trion Worlds' next MMO, Defiance. The word "revolutionary" was thrown around quite a bit, and as with any self-proclaimed revolution, I was skeptical.

Unfortunately for this jaded writer, Defiance is revolutionary. The upcoming MMO shooter developed by Trion Worlds isn't a game "based on" or "inspired" by Syfy's upcoming new show--it's being built as an integral part of transmedia story. While many properties have attempted convergence between cinema and gaming, the persistent world of Defiance offers an opportunity to create something genuinely new.

Read more: Will 'fun enough' be good enough? »