Trion Worlds chief: You got MMOs? Bring ’em to our platform

Trion Worlds spent years building its platform for massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. It built a modern and innovative infrastructure capable of handling dynamic events, such as appearance of gigantic enemy that all players could attack at once.

But the company went through its own financial struggles, and then emerged with a new strategy and a new chief executive. Scott Hartsman, the executive producer of Trion’s first online game, Rift, left the company briefly and then returned in 2013 to take over as CEO. His internal teams are still working on titles such as Rift, Defiance, and Trove.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.