It was with a heavy heart that we brought you the news late last week that, after a three-season run on the network, Syfy had decided to formally cancel Defiance, bringing an end to a sci-fi, cross-media experiment that simply couldn’t maintain its viewership as the seasons wore on.
However, though Syfy has effectively sounded the death knell for the live-action series, developer Trion has assured fans that they remained fully committed to supporting the MMO in the future, viewing the canned TV show and its source material as two separate entities. In the wake of Variety’s report announcing the cancellation, CEO of Trion Scott Hartsman reached out to Polygon with the following message.
“Defiance is Trion’s IP and the game will continue exactly as before. The show has always been a fantastic and interesting partner, but the two were always meant to be able to stand on their own, which is why the show was primarily set in St. Louis and the game in the SF Bay Area.”
As the holder of the intellectual property, the future of Defiance rests in the hands of Trion, and later in the interview Harstman noted that the title will continue “exactly as before,” meaning fans of the video game shouldn’t notice any tangible differences following Syfy’s announcement.
Launching in April of 2013, Defiance began life as a paid title before switching to the free-to-play template exactly a year later. Since then, the studio has flirted with bringing the sci-fi epic to the current generation of consoles, though cautioned that it will wait until its install base is big enough before considering a port to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Syfy and Trion’s transmedia experiment is no more – but Defiance will live on.
