End of Nations development shifts from Petroglyph to Trion

Update:

We received an official statement from Petroglyph that clears everything about this matter. Here it is:

“Petroglyph Games Inc., an innovative studio that has created and launched multiple successful games over the years, has concluded its work as developer on End of Nations for publisher Trion Worlds. As a result, Petroglyph has reduced its workforce by 19 employees.

The team at Petroglyph is very excited about End of Nations, a title which earned more than 50 nominations and awards while in development, and looks forward to its upcoming release.

Additionally, Petroglyph recently moved into a larger facility in Las Vegas to house its current headcount of over 90 employees. Development work continues on multiple projects across different genres and platforms, both internally and externally funded, with releases planned through 2014.”

Original story:

In a surprising turn of events, Petroglyph Games is no more developing the free-to-play MMORTS End of Nations. The development was handed over to Trion Worlds, which was supposedly just the publisher of this game.

Community manager Lance James wrote on the official forums: “As End of Nations was reaching the pre-launch phase in its life cycle, we officially brought the game development in house to Trion Worlds and will complete the development internally.”

“Our team has been hard at work implementing many changes based on your feedback from the beta events.”

There was no justification for the shift, however. The recent lay-offs at Petroglyph may be a sign of troubles at the studio, or on the other hand, it may be the consequence of the development shift.