Trion Worlds, the MMO developer behind hits like Rift and the recently released Defiance, has announced that its Sci-Fi themed title has officially reached 1 million users. The open-world, massively multiplayer experience has hit the milestone just one month after its launch on PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360.
Along with this news comes a stream of interesting facts and figures available from a full month of play time. The developer claims that Defiance players have killed more than 500,000,000 hellbugs to date, as well as driven 50,000,000 miles in the game and battled one million Arkfalls.
But what, exactly, has allowed what many critics have labeled as a middling product to find so much success? It’s likely that the transmedia effort being put in by Trion Worlds and TV network SyFy has boosted the initial figures. The show, which debuted on SyFy April 15, smashed records at the network, seeing 2.7 million viewers for the first episode. It was also SyFy's most-watched scripted series debut for adults in seven years, which seems to have led many viewers to their game-playing device of choice to dig into the experience. A steady stream of advertising for the game during the show probably doesn’t hurt too much, either.
Thankfully, all of these players will have plenty of content to enjoy down the line. As of now, Trion Worlds is planning to put a good deal of value into Defiance by offering more than 10 gigabytes of downloadable content during 2013 and 2014. So, there should be no shortage of quests to complete and enemies to smoke in this new hit.
