Gamigo Suffers Another Round Of Layoffs, Fractured Online Disappears From Website
Gamigo has undergone its second round of layoffs this year which seems to have affected everyone from its executives to its rank-and-file employees, including RIFT’s last remaining community manager.
The company has also announced that it will be shutting down its Aeria Games Portal and will be transferring publishing responsibilities for Aura Kingdom, Grand Fantasia, Last Chaos, and Shaiya to different publishers. The first two will be picked up by X-Legend while the last two will be transferred to Fawkes Games, although there’s a chance that Shaiya will end up in Nexon’s hands should the negotiations with Nexon push through.
Affected players are advised to spend all their Aeria points before the Aeria Games Portal officially shuts down at the end of February 2023. Here’s the official announcement for Aura Kingdom which more or less mirrors that of the other games.
“In order to provide you with a better service in the next year, we must close some of our old infrastructure & technology. This means that the Aeria Games portal and backend will be closed by the end of February next year (2023),” Gamigo announced. “This was not an easy decision, but it will help improve the experience and gameplay for all our active players.”
“Don’t be worried about your progress, the gameplay data can be transferred to our partner,” the studio added. “The data will be anonymized, and soon you will receive a private token via your account email address that you can redeem at our partner’s website, to recover your gameplay data.”
Players are also advised to check and update their registered email to make sure that they receive the transfer token. Once the portal is closed, Gamigo will no longer be able to assist players with recovering their transfer codes due to data protection reasons, so make sure that you have the right one on file. Transfers for Aura Kingdom and Grand Fantasia are expected to start by the second week of January 2023.
Gamigo will still retain publishing rights for several other games in its portfolio, including Fractured Online, Fiesta Online, Trove, RIFT, Wizard 101, and Pirate101. Fractured Online, however, seems to have mysteriously disappeared from the company’s website leading to speculation about the sandbox MMORPG’s future, especially since updates have been slow to arrive since its early access launch earlier this year in addition to the lack of communication from both Gamigo and Dynamight Studios.