In an interview with Eurogamer, RIFT executive producer Scott Hartsman mentioned that Trion has no plans for turning RIFT into a free-to-play title stating, “Right now, absolutely no plans whatsoever“.
Not a big surprise to hear given that the overall consensus is that RIFT is doing pretty well, however when asked for subscription numbers, Hartsman declined to provide any. Although he did mention that the game is “absolutely profitable“.
Not only is Trion making money from RIFT, but Hartsman stated they are licensing the technical platform of all three games (RIFT, End of Nations and Defiance) in which they were built on. So it doesn’t seem like money is an issue for Trion currently.
That being said, it’s almost never a good thing when a publisher doesn’t release any numbers, especially after being release for as long as RIFT has. The only number we’ve seen so far is the 1 million registered accounts that were created during the pre-launch. Had RIFT actually hit 1 million subscribers, I’m sure they would have gladly released that number by now.