Official word: Perpetual lives, STO "still a triple-A game"

There has been a lot of confusion with regards to the fate of Perpetual Entertainment and Star Trek Online over the past few days. First, an SEC report was filed by Gravity that appeared to say that Perpetual Entertainment was liquidating all assets and would cease to exist as a company. Then, Shacknews ran a story claiming that STO had been bought and would be re-invented as a "more casual" experience.

Star Trek Online's Executive Producer Daron Stinett addressed panicked fans, saying that not all is as it seems. We have the lowdown here for you. The heart of the matter: it appears that STO has not been canceled or nerfed after all --at least not to the degree that we feared. That said, here's the full story so far.

With regards to the SEC report, Stinett said: "That report relates to a transaction that took place a while back. And while I can't get into details right now, I want to assure the community that the entire Star Trek team is still here working hard and eagerly anticipating our chance to finally share our big plans." So, it looks like WarCry's Razor may have been close to the truth.

Stinett also said that the team is "in the process of finding a formal publisher, which involves conversations with a variety of parties." Additionally, he said that the rumors of a paradigm shift in the business model are greatly exaggerated, and that the game is not locked into anything in that area until Perpetual works it out with a publisher (once it finds one).

Stinett is considering business models other than the traditional $15/mo approach, though. "I personally think MMOs need to be a better deal," he said. "We are discussing this issue internally. Unfortunately the discussion leaked and the characterization is incorrect."

So maybe STO is not going casual after all. That would explain GameSpot's report that a build of the game very recently seen running at Perpetual's offices appeared to be close to the originally stated vision.

Unless there's a yet-to-be-revealed catch, it appears that our worst fears have not come to pass after all; Star Trek Online still exists and is still a "true" MMORPG, albeit with some aspirations for higher-than-usual accessibility.