Trion CEO Scott Hartsman Takes to Reddit Regarding Orphiel's Mount Crate

Earlier today, a $100 Rift loot crate that contained the chance for a premium mount raised the ire of the game's community. Subsequently, it was removed from the in-game shop, an action that was explained briefly by Community Manager Linda Brasse. In a new post on Reddit, Trion Worlds CEO Scott Hartsman has a more extended letter to the community.

Here is the letter in its entirety:

Hey, everyone - I wanted to stop in to post this one myself.

For this year’s holiday season, we wanted to do something fun and special across all of our games. We created a bunch of great events, sales and all new unique items to celebrate the holidays. One just plain wasn’t great.

You dragged us for it. We deserved that. It’s gone. And we’re sorry it happened.

Orphiel's Mount Crate, an item created for RIFT, was an attempt to do something new and create a tradeable box that guaranteed a rare cosmetic mount, but we badly misread how people would take it and that’s completely on us.

We removed the crate from the store late this morning, and are discussing how to handle similar content in the future. The RIFT team and Trion Worlds as a whole are always trying to do right by our players, but we don’t always get it right. This was one of those times.

When we were conceiving our Holiday sale plans for RIFT in particular, the goal was to create a big celebration and include some great deals. We came up with many different sales, offers and events, from our annual in-game Fae Yule event to the new Moosedantix Power Pack and a 25% discount on a year of Patron, daily rewards, a fun Log in to Win event, and Orphiel’s Mount Crate.

Being a free to play game, microtransactions are how RIFT pays its bills, so our teams are always looking for how to do that best in ways that work for our players. Unfortunately, this was one of those ideas that did not hit that bar. I take responsibility for that; we must be better and I must be better.

Everyone who works here is in this for the love of games, our players, and the gaming industry, but we absolutely acknowledge that we have more work to do to prove this to you. This was a definitely a teachable moment for us, and one we intend to learn from. Times like these force us to take a fresh look at the best ways to improve ourselves and our games’ business models.

We strive to be a company for players, those who come into our worlds and have a great time regardless of how much money they spend. We want our name to be synonymous with high-quality, fun, and engaging game worlds.

We need to put our money where our mouth is and do right by you. We’re trying to figure out the best ways to do this in a way that makes sense for RIFT, Trion Worlds as a whole, and our players.

Thanks for reading, and please accept our humble apologies. We will continue to make a lot of great content and offer promotions in the future, and while not all of them will land, do know that we’re working to be better in the future.

Thanks for your time, and we do wish you all a happy holiday season.

• Scott Hartsman CEO, Trion Worlds

You can check out the thread on the Rift Reddit. Leave us your thoughts in the comments.