What's new

Sony Online Entertainment is now Daybreak Game Company

Crake

୧༼ಠ益ಠ༽୨ Stronk
6mQpuiI.jpg

Dear Players, Partners and Friends,
Today, we are pleased to announce that we have been acquired by Columbus Nova, an investment management firm well known for its success with its existing portfolio of technology, media and entertainment focused companies. This means that effective immediately SOE will operate as an independent game development studio where we will continue to focus on creating exceptional online games for players around the world, and now as a multi-platform gaming company. Yes, that means PlayStation and Xbox, mobile and more!
As part of this transition, SOE will now become Daybreak Game Company. This name embodies who we are as an organization, and is a nod to the passion and dedication of our employees and players. It is also representative of our vision to approach each new day as an opportunity to move gaming forward.
So what exactly does this mean for you? It will be business as usual and all SOE games will continue on their current path of development and operation. In fact, we expect to have even more resources available to us as a result of this acquisition. It also means new exciting developments for our existing IP and games as we can now fully embrace the multi-platform world we are living in.
Our games and players are the heart and soul of our organization, and we are committed to maintaining our portfolio of online games and pushing the limits of where we can take online gaming together.
Thank you for your continued support. See you in game!
The Team at Daybreak

source: http://www.reddit.com/r/h1z1/comments/2ujaaj/sony_online_entertainment_becomes_daybreak_game/

So, will this be another bleed 'em dry venture capital scheme? Discuss below.
 
I vote yes, bleed em dry.
Probably on a 10 year plan with ridiculous retention rates and huge cuts in budget and employment.
So, in about 3 years everyone will have lost money and the players will be gone too.

Sucks butter for the Final Fantasy players.
It seems "A Realm Reborn" was going along quite well. I was even looking at trying it.
Now.. lol, no (Super Derp!)

Oh well, there is always the 10% chance this company is a long term one, but from what this reads like it's a pump & dump at best.
I mean "Daybreak Game Company"... a 5 year old would come up with better.
Plus that's the throw away name given to them by "Columbus Nova" the holding company who doesn't want their name directly attached.

Good luck gamers, its gonna be a rough time.

Wow, after looking at the website for Columbus Nova, it looks like a company designed to do one thing only. Get some guys huge CEO salaries as they lose other people's money. Our website is more professional and better designed.
RIP indeed.
 





This could be a great thing for them as they can develop PS2, H1Z1, and EQN for all platforms now. It just depends on what Columbus Nova has planned for them.
 
All I can say is look at Columbus Nova : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Nova
It's a Russian shell company. No wonder there's little to no information on their main website.
I mean isn't it a bit crazy a 15 billion dollar company has a site with less information than the local dive bar?

I would also bet that the 15 billion in assets is their accumulated debt and purchase load, no where near their worth or holdings.
Bad things on the horizon, bad things. Be glad you don't work there, as you are now in
 
Lol, everything about them screams KGB money laundering front for all their crocodil sales.
 
Bad signs...

http://massivelyop.net/2015/03/05/daybreak-slashes-customer-service-offerings/

DAYBREAK CONSTRICTS GAMEMASTERS IN EQ AND EQII

(...)

The new policy severely limits what gamemasters can do to correct what Daybreak is calling “simple gameplay errors” in EverQuest II.

What constitutes a simple gameplay error? Gamemasters will no longer be on call to fix deleted items, accidentally sold items, accidentally bought items, misloots, or accidental modifications of items. “Deleted characters will not be restored,” Daybreak warns, so “feel free to re-roll a new character.”

Of note, the studio says it will not “administrate a guild or intervene in guild management affairs in any way,” meaning that if your guild leader disappears, you’re out of luck: “If your guild leader is absent, please create a new guild of your own or find another guild on the server that meets your needs.” Guild and character renames, the studio recommends, are to be handled with name change potions available in the cash shop.

So what exactly do GMs do now? “Game Masters are available to assist with errors with the game and/or servers” like crashes and rollbacks, writes Daybreak. Classic EverQuest’s support policy has been similarly updated.

(...)
 
bad news for EQN
via reddit http://www.reddit.com/r/EQNext/comments/2xuax0/storybricks_is_closing_down/

Just received this email from them:
So Long, Farewell, Namárië, Goodbye
Dear all,
The journey we took exactly 5 years ago to change artificial intelligence in games has come to an end. We tried our best, the world changed a bit, and now it's our turn to take a bow and move on. Storybricks is closing down.
Over the past few months we nurtured a desire to go beyond games and find a different vision, one that was more inclusive and could make a difference for a large number of people. This combined with the effect our travel schedule was having on our families made me (Rodolfo) and my co-founder (Stéphane) decide to move onto other projects beyond Storybricks.
It was our own decision and Sony Online Entertainment (now Daybreak Games) bears no fault for it. Sony Online Entertainment had been up for sale for a long time so our exit had no connection with the Columbus Nova acquisition.
We tried to find a new home for our tech so somebody else would have continued our efforts. I can confirm that Storybricks was for sale, but we did not find an agreement with the buyers we wanted. Since this happened over the course of few months everyone affected has been able to find a new job. Brian 'Psychochild' Green is working on Camelot Unchained, Guilherme Töws is at Mediatonic, Wallace Poulter and Brian Schwab are at Magic Leap (but they can't say what they are up to yet. Super secret stuff) and so on.
Majority of the work we have done is about EverQuest Next and is co-owned by Daybreak. But there are few side projects and a demo that we plan to release for free that are unrelated to EQN. It's nothing major but maybe some Storybricks tech can live in other games. Give us some time to sort that out.
We would like to thank the EverQuest Next team at Daybreak Games, particularly Darrin McPherson and Terry Michaels, for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to have worked on a great franchise and alongside such talented people. We look forward to the release of EQN. We would also like to thank Ken Levine at Irrational and Kevin Bruner at Telltale Games (and their respective teams - you know who you are.), the many game developers who have reached out to us over the years to advance a medium that we love, as well as the players who have shared our dream of better storytelling through gameplay and AI.
Stéphane and I are starting a new venture unrelated to gaming but we won't disappear completely. We are looking to hire AI engineers and iOS/Android front-end developers in the SF Bay Area (Sunnyvale/Mt View). Please reach out to me at rodolfo[at]metatron.xyz if you are interested.
Rodolfo Rosini & Stéphane Bura
PS. There is one more story to tell before we part ways.
We fell in love with the EverQuest franchise and we wanted the best possible future for it. We knew Sony Online (300+ employees IIRC) was for sale so Storybricks (barely 10 people) tried to actually buy out the whole division. We retained an investment banking firm as a proxy and they went directly to Sony Corporate bypassing the local executives. We would have been able to raise the necessary capital, and had interviewed new and existing management ready for a turnover.
Alas, it was not meant to be as the terms offered by Sony Japan were unacceptable to us and to our investors. It is my understanding that other buyers had the same reaction and, in the end, Columbus Nova got a completely different deal that the one we were offered, but by then our investor group had moved on.
Make no mistake the company needed cuts badly, and we would have cut and cut deeply. Possibly as deep as Columbus Nova did but maybe we would have cut more senior management and less game developers instead. It was our intention to try to acquire the 38 Studios assets and made them available to players in EQN. Moreover we would have probably changed the server infrastructure allowing people to run their own servers. It would not have been a very canonical EverQuest but we would have done the best to service our customers with the limited budget of an independent studio who wanted to punch above its weight.
We really did try our best. And our best was not enough.
 
Top Bottom