Sony Online Entertainment Becomes Daybreak Game Company

Then they must be reading this too.

Open it up to the community...its 2015 already. Let us help you help you and make this game better.

This is old news for core SOE guys remember. SISA, 989, RedEye, Verant, I am sure Daybreak as a company will be fine with whatever new name they have =) The only thing that scares me is that investment firms don't always make great artistic content managers as things become about the money not the art. There is always a truth to that even with a conglomerate like Sony as your "leader" but even less so "I fear" with a company who's sole purpose isn't content creation but wealth generation.

Smedly please take this as a chance to improve what you couldn't improve because of the strangle hold Japan had on Sony based content and IP's, don't use this as a chance to become some double speak money collector, please don't turn into another Trion Worlds with Archeage please! Ive been a long time supporter. LONG TIME. Can't wait to see what you guys pump out from here on out. Much excitement even with the little bit of concern.

Let me first tell everyone that SOE was sold off because it was a failing arm of Sony itself. There has been a LOT of pushing from major share holders to get Sony to sell off or spinoff it's entertainment business.


That said, I know private equity firms tend to be less in the long term hold and more in the short term "restructure, streamline, and sell-off" business. This investment firm is PE and $15B isn't really that much considering the price growth in private vs public markets right now (private is doing a LOT better). Mid-size boutique equity firms are in the $5B range.

I'd have to say this firm is probably just going to streamline this company, then sell it off, giving little to no care in the world about the product. Remember they're in the business of maximizing returns for their investors, not making a great product for the world. My evidence that they will probably ruin this game is already apparent from H1Z1 where a few days before the release, Smed said on video that they wouldn't allow you to buy weapons or ammo and then had paid air drops (with weapons, ammo, etc.) at release. You can be assured, that call was likely from the owners and not from the dev's.


I'm a financial trader myself and I know when I made an investment, I really don't care about the customers or product one bit. All I care about is ensuring a maximized rate of return. If that means making a great product, then that's what I'll do. But if I can simply replace half the staff with cheaper developers, cut projects, and turn the existing ones into money siphons, I'll do that too. I don't see a product, I see companies in earnings reports and not names, faces, and products.

I am going to be tentatively hopeful that this means there will be more improvements and expansion for these games. I want more continents for PS2, I want EQN. Getting them on an XBoxOne would just be a bonus.
Possibly this investment firm will allow renewal of the Physx license? Maybe recoding into DX11?
Better to stay hopeful than rant and rave against bad possibilities.

*Gamebreak Day Company

Thank you for the post and I wish you and the rest of Daybreak the best. Daybreak (formerly SOE) has been a gem of creativity and a home of good people (many who I have the good fortune to know personally). I appreciate all your hard work and passion, and hope this transition goes smoothly for everyone there.

I did some looking over. Seems SOE (now DBG) is now owned by Columbus Nova, a "value" (value = buy when cheap and hold) based "Multi-Strategy Invenstment Firm".

Make sure to add this guy to your LinkedIn
Jason Epstein https://www.linkedin.com/pub/jason-epstein/80/617/476

And make a point to get to know the bio for these guys:

Jason Epstein
http://www.columbusnova.com/jason_epstein.html

Paul Lipari (don't see a LI for him)
http://www.columbusnova.com/paul_lipari.html

Andrew Intrater (don't see a LI for him)
http://www.columbusnova.com/andrew_intrater.html

(And maybe these: http://www.cntp.com/ click "Team" link)

Harmonix (Rock Band) was bought out by Jason Epstein (Senior Managing Partner of Columbus Nova) in late 2010. (Viacom sold Harmonix for peanuts in order to [1] unload unpaid costs ("liabilities") owed under the brand and [2] cash in on tax benefits for recording the loss on the sale) The Harmonix deal wasn't technically Columbus Nova (it was just one guy from it), but it's probably the same deal (cause it's one of the guys from Columbus Nova): pick up a subsidiary for cheap and then run it for profit over long haul.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonix#Sale_by_Viacom

"Following the purchase, Harmonix underwent a restructuring in February 2011, laying off about 12-15% of the 240-person staff"
"Approximately 6 to 9 months after its sale from Viacom, Harmonix started to grow again, boosted by sales of Dance Central which led to the development of its sequel Dance Central 2 in late 2011. By mid-2011, the company began developing new IP in both the mobile and social game markets, and began rehiring to aid in the development of these games"
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonix#Sale_by_Viacom

Rhapsody also had 15% layoffs when Columbus Nova came on board with them in 2013.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/business/media/rhapsody-cuts-staff-as-new-investor-arrives.html

Columbus Nova is an Inventment Group that follows a "Value" Strategy. I worked for Brandes Investment Partners for 10 years (another Value Strategy company, though strictly minority ownership equities & debt based). Value Strategy means they play for the long game, and don't make deals with quick exits for the fast buck. Look for Columbus Nova to have an active hand in Daybreak, first getting the ship how they want it (including small % of layoffs and any management changes), and then in growing the brand and products over the following years.

I thought Smed's comment "Can't wait to make Xbox games" was very funny (in a good way ). Gets the message out that Daybreak's future is full of new possibilities, and makes a strong statement of Daybreak as its own brand beyond its Sony(/989) roots/legacy.

This is capitalism ; and buyers know what they do so it can be good.

Planetside 2 is an extraordinary game, and we can see the wonderful work of some devs (Malorn/Bennett, Devin Lafontaine and Xander Klauss notably, and all others that work in more technical areas which are less obvious).

However, I never liked the cartoonesque art direction, the creative direction created nothing and is just focused of changing balance permanently, and the choice of porting PS2 on PS4 only resulted in bad news for the PC players that financed a part of PS2, by increasing some long term problems : bugs fixes delayed, things wanted by players since launch never implemented, no new content, apparently no thoughts on tactics and metagame (I've decided to quit my outfit because redeployside made strategy useless and time consuming and I now redeploy and play permanent deathmatchs).

I now just hope we can still have more good new bases and environment and more Quality of life updates. If it's the case, I will be pleased to still buy station cash just to support my favorite game since QA3 WF in 2000-2003.

Good luck Daybreak! Hopefully this willl be the start of a new successful chapter in this teams history.

I'll address a few things that caught my attention as I read through.

1. It would be incredibly stupid to pull the plug on PS2 and H1z1. I don't get how people think this spells the end of PS2. Why would they eliminate any chance of profit after spending the last year developing PS2onPS4 by shutting down? They need to make some of the money back. Investment companies invest money in companies to turn around and make money, not destroy their products and turn away their customers. What point is there is buying a company and running it into the ground or ruining its products to only be able to sell it for a cheaper price or go bankrupt?

2. Without Sony hovering in the background, maybe the dev team will participate in their own forums. While the reddit community is strong, they've said in the past that moderation played a big role in not posting here.

3. I have no reason to believe that this transition will be anything other than business as usual from a customer perspective.

4. For those asking why, IMO I have a feeling that SOE/Daybreak didn't have a say in the matter. Sony itself is doing pretty poorly financially, and selling off some of its assets is something that many people in finance have seen happening for quite awhile now.

Hah Hah Trion and End of Nation game. Well that was a big epic fail... But still I see similar actions SOE/whatever with PS2.
And yes, it's end of PS2. Wait and see. Devs think that they know what players want and ignore what players say.

They may not walk away but that doesn't mean the direction they will take the game will be a good one (it's impossible to know at this point). There are plenty of bad games that make money too, and good ones that don't. Farmville made tons of money but it's a terrible game. Call of Duty makes loads of money too and it's mediocre. EA/DICE actually tried to make Battlefield more like COD hoping to make more money, and pretty much ruined Battlefield in the process.

I just hope they are reasonable guys who don't go like "let's fire everyone but the new guys who don't cost as much" and end up rehiring everyone for twice the wage because they have to realize that code and arts can't be outsourced just like that.
I also hope they realize that they shouldn't piss off the players (aka customers) by firing our beloved community managers (*waves to RadarX*).
If it's true that they regard the game as a long-term investment, chances are they also invest in new server hardware while fixing the long standing bugs in network and system architecture, which indeed is a good thing. It will mean that we won't be seeing any new content or even bugfixes for a long time though.

The thing that concerns me most is that they might be tempted to fundamentally alter the gameplay in order to monetize without having a clue about the consequences. While I do see a lot of potential in that regard - some things I already have proposed myself, like tangible homes for outfits but with no direct impact on gameplay - I hope they don't mess it up so badly that PS is going to turn into something we don't recognize anymore.

Good luck to all of us. Let's hope for the best.

That's not any different than any of the patches or other changes lately. We don't need luck, we need professional game developers.

By now, you all should know it from the battlefield, that once momentum is lost your difficulties are gonna multiply rapidly. Marketwise a game that fails for two years to deliver alpha-playability seems to have had its momentum in the past. I would love to state otherwise, but I know you dogs of war will fight tooth and nail with your backs to the wall.

Venture Capital money is the death throe of a proper game dev. Not that you can even call "Daybreak" one anymore.

Deleted

The great thing about the situation is that the Private Investment firm may actually be more receptive to gamer's perspective than Sony was as they will be trying really hard to ensure profitability. With $15B that they manage, they can't really allow the kind of losses Sony saw over the last couple of years (not all related to SOE of course). They may actually welcome feedback on the portfolio they have just purchased, so I'm encouraging you to contact them directly with your thoughts and suggestions.



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General Inquiries:
info@columbusnova.com

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David Diwik President And Chief Executive Officer ddiwik@columbusnova.com
KIM BISSOONDIAL President kbissoondial@columbusnova.com
Steven Flyer Partner sflyer@columbusnova.com
Paul Lipari Partner and Member of Investment and Executive Committee plipari@columbusnova.com
Stephen Pandos Principal/Managing Dir spandos@columbusnova.com
Jason Epstein Senior Managing Partner jepstein@columbusnova.com
Faith Goulbourne Executive Assistant to Chief Financial Officer fgoulbourne@columbusnova.com

I'm near certain this'll mean Xbox One, which can be a great thing really. Could possibly also mean SteamOS/Linux and/or OSX support, though less likely. The game needs to start making money again, otherwise it'll get shut down. Simple as that. More platforms have some potential to increase money flow, even though the focus on PC gets shifted down.

When you buy a company you intend to make money off it somehow. Let's just hope it's by stepping up their current game efforts instead of by licensing IP.

Port to X-Box should be doable, but not without a challenge. Linux and OS X you can forget about, it's not going to happen.

Again, another primetime alert on Emerald and WG's rotate instead of locking.
Meaning server population is high.
Am I wrong?
This is still THE best game there is atm.
Hopefully, it just gets better and not trashed.
If they realize they need to help improve things first before trying any last minute cash grabs then they can have a long haul title here.
Time will tell.

So, now that Sony are not your overlords, any chance of that PhysX that got me into the game getting done? I mean, you guys said almost a year ago that you and nVidia were working on it. I mean I love the game, but I love my shinies. I'm what would happen if a raccoon and a dragon procreated, so pretty lights and flashy things are a must for me, it's why I play Warframe. If I can get my daily dose of killing AND shinies I'll become a yearly subscriber.