Good Friday Bullet Points about Business Moves

It is Easter on Sunday, at least western Easter.  Orthodox Easter isn’t until… oh wow, May 5th.  So Cinco de Mayo and Greek Easter together, that should be some fun.  Anyway, all I have today is some updates around a few things I previously covered.

• DC Universe Online now PlayStation 5 Native

As expected, Daybreak/Enad Global 7 has launched a PlayStation 5 version of its popular DC Universe Online title.  DCUO is the biggest revenue earner in the Daybreak catalog of titles and the company blamed a bit of their revenue shortfall in 2023 on the fact that the title wasn’t available as a native PlayStation 5 application.

DCUO on PlayStation 5

Unexpected was the sudden arrival of the update, unheralded by any build up.  Instead, there was just a post over on the DCUO site on Tuesday announcing it had launched.  Surprise!

Included in the announcement was a FAQ about the PlayStation 4 and 5 versions of the game as well as a Producer’s Letting going into more plans around the game as well as a roadmap for the game through Q1 2025.

I’m still not sure what is going on with PlanetSide 2, the IP for which was sold according to the last quarterly investors update, but which otherwise appears to be still on the Daybreak list of game.  But DCUO seems to be on a solid course.

• Guild Wars 3 Confirmed!

At the NCsoft shareholder meeting earlier this week, when challenged about under performing titles, declining disclose individual game revenues, and general executive responsibility, the company’s acting chairman did a lot of hand waving, but in the midst of his half-assed defense, threw out the tidbit that ArenaNet was working on Guild Wars 3.

For the MMO audience, that immediately became the news, and coverage has popped up about it at several sites, along with cautions about what this really mean.  Coverage:

• • Massively OP
  • WCCFTech
  • MMO Bomb
  • Nerdy Bookahs

The caution is, of course, to not get too excited just yet.  This was hardly a planned announcement and, to my mind, carries less weight than Ji Ham declaring last year that they are planning to work on a new EverQuest title.  In part, that is because we know that ANet is actively working on the next two Guild Wars 2 expansions.

Following on from that statement the company told local news that the title is “in the review stage and the start of development has not been finalized.” Still, it could be a thing at some future date.

• Embracers Unembraces Gearbox

The awful Embracer Group, whose business plan seems to have been:

• • • Buy a bunch of game studios
    • …
    • Profit!

continues its ongoing deconstruction as the crumbling wannabe conglomerate signed a deal to sell Gearbox, creator of the popular Boarderlands franchise, to TakeTwo Interactive for $460 million.  That is more than the $363 million Embracer spent on the studio back in 2021, though sources say that the deal ended up costing Embracer more than a billion dollars because… well, incompetence.

This will likely not be the last departure from the now ironically named Embracer Group.

Embrace This

Meanwhile, TakeTwo Interactive seems to have conglomeration visions of its own.  It currently owns Rockstar, makers of the popular Grand Theft Auto series, 2K, which publishes the Civilization series, BioShock, and the Boarderlands titles (so that will all be under one roof now), and… checks notes… Zynga, whose best financial move was buying property in the SF Bay area in the mid-2000s, the sale of which earned it more money than all the FarmVille whales combines.

In the midst of all of this, Embracer announced, after shutting down development on nearly 30 titles and laying off around 1,400 staff, along with this sale of a key asset, that their restructuring is done, but they are not yet ready to start acquiring studios again.  JFC, the lack of self-awareness is simply unbelievable.  I pity any studio Embracer is able to get its incompetent claws into going forward, should they manage to get enough nickles saved up to do so.

Always thinking about that shareholder value over at Embracer.

• Blizzard and NetEase Together Again Soon?

One of the final screw ups of the now finally gone Bobby Kotick was to poison the relationship between Activision Blizzard and NetEase, the company that operated Blizzard’s titles in China.  Western companies need a Chinese partner in any such venture, and that partner must be a majority shareholder in the venture according to Chinese law, which gives the Chinese government the ability to pressure western companies when they are displeased, as we saw in the Blitzchung incident, which led to then Blizzard CEO J. Allen Brack to read an apology from the company that satisfied almost nobody.

It was enough to ask if doing business in China was worth having no moral grounding… but then there was money on the table and we have long since seen that morality and corporations have zero common ground unless there is legal pressure… so it was back to business as usual in China for the company.

That is, until Bobby Kotick screwed the whole deal up.  NetEase did not call him out by name, but there aren’t a lot of other people who could meet their description of poor corporate governance and not be fired.  So there was a messy and loud departure from China for Blizzard over a year back.

Now, however, Kotick is out, Microsoft is running the show, and The South China Morning Post was predicting last week (paywall now, sorry, though somehow I read the whole thing last week) that NetEase and Blizzard would resume their business relationship, bringing World of Warcraft and other titles back to mainland China by some point in April.

That seems like a fast move, but then again the Microsoft deal has been closed for a while now and Bobby was sent packing with his enormous severance package at the end of last year, so there has been plenty of time to get things back in motion.

The question now is, after a year of feeling betrayed, what sort of welcome will Chinese gamers give the returning Blizzard?

 

Daybreak Relative Game Revenues in 2023

Once more into that video, this time to explore one single chart.  I am not obsessed, I swear.  It was just one of those moments where we got a lot more data than we usually get from game studios, and there was a lot to unpack so I decided to spread it out across a few posts.

Another tip for the video: It seems to default to 360p for me, but you can turn it up to a much sharper resolution to get a nice, crisp look at the visuals.  And one of them is this chart, which comes up just after the 30 minute mark in the video.

The blog is going to squish that down to 600px wide, but you can click on it to see it at about double that resolution.

Monthly gross revenue by title

Why do I want to look at this chart?  Well, there is a general interest aspect to it, just to look at how the various titles in the Daybreak stable of games contribute towards their overall revenue.

There are not a lot of surprises in that.  We had a detailed report with percentages back in December of 2020 when Enad Global 7 was proposing to purchase Daybreak.  That gave as an uncharacteristic look into the revenue of the company.  You should go read through that post if it is the sort of thing that interests you.  But we got some break outs for 2020 revenue through September 30th.

Page 16 – Revenue and Earnings compared YTD through Sep. 30 2020

This pair of charts was one of the more illuminating.  What that showed was DC Universe Online was far and away the largest gross revenue generator.

But the surprise bit was that, even with DCUO that far out in front for gross revenue, EverQuest still delivered slightly more net revenue.  EBITDA is “earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization” and was/is a bit of a BS metric introduced after the tech Y2K tech bubble to make companies look better by showing profits BEFORE taking those other items into consideration.  In the US the SEC makes companies reconcile that against actual net profits if they use it in an earnings statement.

But for our purposes, for the purposes of comparing the profitability of individual titles at Daybreak, it is useful metric for determining the raw net revenue.

Net revenue is what you get after you take out all the costs of getting to the first number.  In the case of DCUO, they have to pay for using the IP as well as having to share out cash shop revenue with Steam and the console platforms, who are taking as much as a 30% bite out of whatever users spend on the game.

EverQuest, meanwhile, is a home grown IP, so no payments on that front, and while it is on Steam, so there is a Valve tax on some transactions, most players deal directly with the company.  So EverQuest gets to keep a lot more of that gross revenue, enough to make it the profit champion despite starting out at barely half of DCUO’s number.

Likewise, EQ’s gross revenue number is comparable to LOTRO’s, but it delivers double the Middle-earth titles profit.

This is, in part, why the oldest game in Daybreak’s stable is still important and still gets a lot of attention and still gets updates and expansions on a regular basis.

And I am going to assert that profitability is the more important of the two measurements.  Having a lot of revenue is always a good thing.  You’re nowhere without it.  But if you have to spend more than you’re making to get it, then there is a problem.

Roblox, for example, made $2.2 billion in revenue in 2022.  That is a pretty huge revenue stream.  That is probably about double World of Warcraft’s best year, and WoW was no slouch at its peak (or now, frankly).  But Roblox LOST money in 2022.  They had to spend more keeping the game going and fighting legal battles and all sorts of other things.  Roblox is basically in a business where it is selling dollar bills for 99 cents.  That is a gross simplification, but it gets to the point of what their problem is.  It is not something make up with volume, as they pitch used to go.

Anyway, what has all that got to do with the chart from the video?

Well, that chart includes all of 2020, so we have the January through September numbers to look at and compare with revenue since then.

Jan through Sep 2020

That segment of the chart is summed up in the Bookings by Game pie chart from that old post.  Those are pre-EG7 numbers… and I am kind of curious why they included them, but there they are… which also happened to be the peak of the Covid video game bonanza, when everybody was stuck at home and those of us without a desire to make sourdough starter or re-watch Tiger King, were playing all sorts of online games.  Animal Crossing: New Horizons has to have been one of the most well timed video game releases ever.

You can see most everything in the Daybreak portfolio got a bump in March/April of 2020, though it didn’t stick for everything.  PlanetSide 2 continued to have a problem holding players.

That period of time has been our lens into which titles are important to Daybreak.  The thing is, Covid… well, it didn’t go away, but we pretty much decided to pretend it did, so its influence waned on the video game industry as things went back to what was probably more the normal course of events.  So the last twelve months of that chart look somewhat different.

May 2022 through June 2023

DCUO and EQ run a lot closer in the gross revenue department… and DCUO seems somewhat more volatile than EQ over the longer term.

Which isn’t to say that EQ doesn’t have its peaks.  but I can explain a lot of those.  One of the things I did with that chart was mark it up to show where paid expansions came out for EQ, EQ2, and LOTRO, just to see if they were boosting revenue to the extent I thought they were.

Gross revenue for Daybreak titles with expansions marked

I did also start trying to mark DCUO “episodes,” the name for its content updates.  And while a few clearly boosted revenue, some had little impact, and none of them are expansions that need to be purchased, so they are not exactly the same.

But for the other three titles you can clearly see they get revenue bumps with expansions.  They just are not nearly as big as I expected.  And for EQ especially you can see other bumps in revenue that are likely related to special server launches and the previous expansion going on sale for half price two months before the new one launches.

Which is interesting as it highlights the importance of EQ… once again, the oldest title in Daybreak’s stable and the one that will be celebrating its 25th launch anniversary in just under six months…  when it comes to Daybreak’s revenue.  It is both cheap to operate and remarkably stable.  It has some peaks and valleys, but few changes one would characterize as dramatic.

It… and LOTRO as well…  seem to be doing very well as titles catering to their installed base.  As I wrote in a post earlier this week, I can understand why EG7 is reluctant to spend a bunch of money on a remaster of LOTRO.  As a fairly stable title when it comes to revenue, it seems unlikely that such a big project would pay off in the long run.

I expect that so long as those titles… and all of their remaining titles really… stay steady, that they won’t be going anywhere.  They do seem to know something about the stewardship of aging games.

Now what about this new EverQuest title they mentioned as a possibility?  Well, that is at least one more post I am going to get out of this video.

Enad Global 7 Q2 2023 Earnings Decline as the My Singing Monsters Bubble Begins to Deflate

Enad Global 7, the company that owns and is run by our friends at Daybreak Games, had their Q2 2023 earnings call earlier this week.

Enad Global 7

Q2 saw the company’s earnings decline from $54 million (572 million SEK) in Q1 to a little under $45 million (483 million SEK).

EG7 Q2 2023 Overall Revenue Chart

This decline was in part, but not entirely, due to Big Blue Bubble’s title My Singing Monsters starting to see the end of its hype cycle, which hit suddenly back in Q4 and propelled the title to be the top earning game in EG7’s portfolio.

Which isn’t to say that MSM is dead, but it is just slightly less popular and likely remains the highest earning single title for EG7.

EG7 Game Segment Revenue

As you can see, Daybreak’s combine titles are now back at the top of the overall revenue chart, though Big Blue Bubble, driven by MSM, isn’t far behind and is still approaching almost double Daybreak’s net profit numbers and margins.

EG7 doesn’t break out Daybreak’s individual titles, though we suspect from past peeks at the numbers that DC Universe Online remains the top overall revenue title while EverQuest still turns in a solid profit due to a sizeable loyal audience and low operating costs.

Daybreak’s overall operating margins however, remain low, likely due to the overhead of running multiple live service titles, several of which are licensed IPs so require royalty payments on top of the need to support and update them.

EG7 Q2 2023 – Daybread vs. Big Blue Bubble earnings and margins

The normalization of MSM’s popularity wasn’t the only pull on earnings.  On the service side of the house things fell into the negative as costs overwhelmed income.

EG7 Q2 2023 – Services Revenue

EG7 cited project delays with larger clients as an issue for Petrol, though assured investors that this was temporary and that the company was still in contract with a number of large IPs.

As for forward looking statements, still acting (but ever hopeful) CEO Ji Ham had little of substance to add, though there was reference to something about pleasing long term investors which may or may not have something to do with the “gut the company and give us the cash” heard from the capital management firm Alta Fox after the Q1 2023 results. (“Gut the company and give us the cash” is the universal motto of capital management firms.)

Otherwise the earnings announcement continued to tout the same owned and licensed IPs.

• Key first-party brands include:
  • EverQuest, considered to be one of the three most iconic fantasy MMO brands in the
    world together with World of Warcraft and Ultima Online.
  • H1Z1, the very first battle royale game that was credited as one of the inspirations
    for Fortnite, with over 40 million life-to-date (LTD) registrations.
  • My Singing Monsters, which has over 140 million (LTD) registrations on mobile and
    PC, reaching top 10 in over 100 countries in the App Store games category and the
    No. 1 spot in more than 15 countries 10 years after its release.
• Top tier global third-party brands:
  • DC Comics from Warner Brothers with continuing pipeline of content from
    blockbuster feature films and TV shows.
  • The Lord of the Rings, arguably the most iconic classic fantasy IP, which has
    experienced mainstream resurgence with the highly appreciated Amazon series that
    premiered in September 2022.
  • Dungeons & Dragons, the legendary fantasy IP with a passionate fan base
    worldwide.
  • Magic: The Gathering, the world’s number one trading card game from Wizards of
    the Coast.

They appear to remain ever hopeful that if they keep pitching H1Z1 as a key brand that maybe something magical will happen and it will suddenly become a thing again.

Related:

• EG7 – Investor Relations Page
• EG7 – Q2 2023 Interim Report
• EG7 – Q2 2023 Investor Presentation
• MOP – Daybreak’s MMORPGs are ‘predictably stable’

Enad Global 7 Cancels Its Daybreak Marvel MMO Project

Say farewell to any dreams about a Marvel Universe Online landing with Enad Global 7, as they announced in a press release that they were giving up on the project and writing of the money invested in it so far.

Enad Global 7

The press release was short and to the point and surprisingly not released at 4pm on Friday afternoon.  But they had an earnings announcement to do, and you have to get the bad news out with that.  The actual text for posterity:

EG7 plans to reinvest Marvel development resources across multiple long-term projects

EG7 today announced it will be discontinuing the development of the Marvel project at Daybreak Games. Based on the re-evaluation of the development risk profile, size of investment, and the long-term product portfolio strategy for the group, the board has decided to change the development priorities and reallocate resources within the group to focus on alternative long-term projects. The company had planned to invest more than SEK 500 million in the Marvel project over the next three years. The company will now diversify this investment across multiple, smaller size projects within the group, including the previously announced major upgrades to The Lord of the Rings Online and DC Universe Online, and new game opportunities with our first party, original IPs. Along with this reallocation, the company expects a write down of approximately SEK 230 million in project related assets in Q2 2022. As one of the long-term investments, the change to the Marvel project plan will not impact near to medium term revenues and profits other than the balance sheet and P&L impact related to the write-down.

You will note the not very subtle spin about investing in other projects… projects they already said they were investing in previously.  Does that mean they are investing more in things like LOTRO and DCUO?  I don’t know.  Maybe?

The assumed reason for the cancellation of the project is the departure of Dimensional Ink studio head Jack Emmert, whose history with super hero MMOs is the stuff of legend.

EG7 even called him out

His leaving, along with whoever he took with him to go work at NetEase, was apparently enough to scuttle the project.  That is always a hazard if a project depends on specific individuals.

This is pretty much a calamity for Daybreak as it continues their lifetime streak of bringing no new projects to launch since the SOE era.  Seriously, H1Z1, EverQuest Next, and Landmark were all under way before Daybreak, so the sum total of Daybreak initiatives looks like the spectacular failure of PlanetSide Arena.

Not only that, but the Marvel project might have been the most widely covered thing that Daybreak has ever announced.  My Google alerts about the company were lit up for days following the tease that they were making a Marvel IP based MMO.

Of course, what I was already calling Marvel Universe Online should have been a slam dunk.  DC Universe Online is already the most popular title in their stable and generates the most gross revenue. (EverQuest, so very cheap to maintain, and such a pillar of the genre, matches it for net profits though.)  Daybreak would have had to go really, really wrong to mess this up.

And yet, here we are.

Then there was the Q1 2022 quarterly report, where they noted income was up year over year, largely through acquisitions, the stock price was down, Daybreak is still the largest single contributor towards revenue, Ji Ham is still acting CEO, and that Innova, a Russian company, is no longer an issue, double pinkie swear.

There wasn’t a lot of new in there, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it, save for this slide.

EQ7 Q1 2022 – Looking Forward

You can see they are still betting on a boost from Amazon’s second age Middle-earth show and that they still want to invest in the things they have said they wanted to invest in previously.  At least H1Z1 isn’t being promoted quite so vigorously… and I say that only because they appear to have no plan for it, so they shouldn’t be promoting it.

So it goes.  The high hopes of 18 months ago seem to have fallen, sapped by the reality of Daybreak at the gaming industry in general.

Related:

• EG7 – Press Release
• EG7 – Q1 2022 Financials Presentation
• Massively OP – EG7 Q1 2022 financials: EG7 has canceled Daybreak’s Marvel MMORPG
• MMO Fallout – Daybreak has Cancelled its Marvel Game

Enad Global 7 Posts Strong Q4 2021 Results with High Hopes for MTGO

Enad Global 7 posted their Q4 2021 and overall 2021 financial results this week.

Enad Global 7

As reported elsewhere, it was a good quarter for the company, with revenue up significantly.

While services made a huge leap in revenue, with the split between services and games being 60/40 in Q4 2021, the whole revenue stack for Q4 2021 dwarfs what it was for Q4 2020 when EG7 was in the process of acquiring Daybreak.

EG7 Q4 2021 slide 8

That said, while Daybreak remains the dominant part of EG7’s game segment, and grew slightly in Q4, I do wonder why it didn’t grow more.

Q3 vs Q4 Games Revenue

Those values are in Swedish Krona, but it is close enough to equal to the US Dollar at the moment as to make no difference for a chart.  Q4 saw Daybreak launch three expansions, with Lord of the Rings Online, EverQuest, and EverQuest II selling virtual boxes with price points as high as $250 for the super deluxe friends and family packs, which would at least lead me to assume that Q4 ought to see a significant bump.  I mean, you don’t ship content packages like that unless they are making you money.

Now, I don’t have the same chart break out for Q2 for a direct, ongoing comparison, and maybe they account for pre-orders in Q3 rather than Q4 (though generally you only count revenue when you deliver a product), but it is still something that makes you wonder.

Anyway, the classes I took on finance and accounting were all more than 30 years ago at this point, so my opinions do not carry a lot of weight.

Instead, I’ll move on to the forward looking statements, as there is a slide dedicated to EG7’s 2022 plans.

EG7 Q4 2021 slide 16

In the short term they have a couple of games in the pipeline.  They are also expecting Lord of the Rings Online to see an uptick due to Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power streaming series, which is slated to premier in September.

Then there is Magic The Gathering Online, which I will get to in a moment, along with some mergers and acquisitions they have going.  I wonder who is left worth buying?

While the business focus is “2022,” the last time around things in the medium term seemed more likely to come to pass in 2023.  Big updates for LOTRO and DCUO were previously mentioned, so MTGO is the new piece in that picture.

And then there is the long term, which looks somewhat different that it did in the Q3 2021 presentation, with a promise of new products based on EverQuest and H1Z1, along with DCUO.  That is new.  I am not sure what it means, and after the folly of EverQuest Next I am not about to get invested in any fantasies about what it might mean, but there it is.  And H1Z1?  They can’t let that go, but there is still nobody actually working on it either last I heard, so I don’t even know where to go with that.

Missing is any reference to the Mavel IP MMO being developed, mentioned as part of the Q3 2021 presentation, which was probably the most widely reported thing EG7 has ever announced.  It is mentioned in passing in the Ji Ham statement at the top of the interim financial report, but that isn’t exactly top billing, so that might be far enough out that they don’t want to wear out its popularity too quickly.

And then there is Magic the Gathering Online, which gets a slide all to itself.

EG7 Q4 2021 Slide 4

EG7 announced this deal back in December, and we’re getting a little more detail now.

“Acquihire” generally means to buy another company to get their development team as opposed to their product line, though given that this is being billed as a license deal with no upfront purchase (free to play acquisitions!),  “aquihire” might be the wrong term, but I am not sure what the right word would be.

But the result is that the team that was working on MTGO now works for Daybreak and are carrying on developing and supporting the live game.  EG7 is highlighting this, and it is a big deal with some revenue heft behind it.

But deals like this don’t happen when a title is doing super awesome and revenue is expected to keep growing.  Magic the Gathering Arena, which is available on mobile devices, as opposed to the Windows only MTGO, is said to be the new hotness for digital MTG fans, with a superior business model and all that.

I am not saying that EG7 is being too optimistic.  MTGO is still a substantial business and an immediate addition to their revenue stream.  They are winning on this deal from day one.  And there is no doubt a solid, core player base invested (literally and figuratively) in this title.  But there is a reason that this deal isn’t getting anything close to the amount of press the Marvel IP announcement did.

Anyway, that is 2021 for EG7.  On to 2022.

Related:

• EG7 – Investor Relations Site
• EG7 – Q4 2021 Interim Financial Report
• EG7 – Q4 2021 Investor Presentation
• MMO Fallout – Enad Global 7 Posts 193% Growth
• Massively OP – Q4 2021: EG7 and Daybreak post huge revenues, bank future on MTGO, LOTRO

Daybreak and the Power of the Marvel Name

For reasons of historical connection I tend to pay much more attention to Daybreak and the goings on with some of their games, even when I am not subscribed and playing.  I think EVE Online and CCP’s shenanigans are the only game company news I watch more closely, and I’ve been subscribed to EVE for a decade straight at this point.

When you don’t play the titles you have to find ways to keep track of what is going on, so I follow the news channels from their Discord servers and the games and studios on Twitter and subscribe to the RSS feed for developer posts on a couple of their forums.  That usually at least keeps me up on their latest announcements.

But I also have Google news alerts for things like “Daybreak” and “EG7” and “Enad Global 7″ and EverQuest” and a few other related keywords.  And those… are generally garbage.

Seriously, I get an alert or two a week for Daybreak and most of the time it is some wannabe analyst group looking to be the next NPD or SuperData that wants to see reports about online gaming that throws as many keywords as possible so you’ll go to their site… and find that it is just an ask for you to spend a couple grand on a report they have put together.

So the Google alerts for Daybreak and related keywords are generally low effort to track because there isn’t much “there” there.

And then the EG7 Q3 2021 financials were released last week, in which it was mentioned that Daybreak was working on an unannounced MMO project based on the Marvel IP.

Dimensional Ink’s Unannounced Project has a logo of sorts

That was certainly worth a mention, though it came out a year ago, during the EG7 acquisition of Daybreak, that they held the rights to make a Marvel IP, and even back in when Daybreak did its independent studio shuffle a superhero MMO was in the cards.  Since then I have been predicting a Marvel version of DC Universe Online, Daybreak’s most popular game.  It seemed like a pretty easy slam dunk idea.

But the whole thing was in the “Longer Term” column of future plans, which would put it, by my own reckoning, out into 2024 at least, if not further out.

EG7 Q3 2021 slide 17

Cool idea, something to look forward to, but not exactly something to write home about right this second due to the obvious distance between now and when it will ship.

Certainly none of the ways I track Daybreak news seemed very interested in it… and then my Google news alerts blew up as the weekend arrived.

While Daybreak probably isn’t newsworthy on its own and I am sure EG7 is even less so, once you mix in Marvel and the MCU, then suddenly everybody sees a headline that will draw some click.  So rather than a couple of garbage links there was suddenly some actual coverage of the studio, first from niche gaming sites, then the general gaming news, and then into other niches that generally wouldn’t know Daybreak from my uncle.  All because somebody said “Marvel IP based MMO.”

So the list of sites with a story about it starts looking like this:

• Massively OP
• MMORPG.com
• MMO Bomb
• PC Gamer
• EuroGamer
• Kotaku
• Rock Paper Shotgun
• GameSpot
• IGN
• Screen Rant
• XBox Achievements
• PlayStation Lifestyle
• Inside Wales Sports
• Comicbook.com

not only is that just a bit of the list, that doesn’t even get into the foreign language coverage that didn’t make my keywords but which I found by just doing a bit of searching.  Big gaming sites with foreign editions translated the stories and foreign language sites wrote their own copy.

Now, we’re still a far cry from something like a front page headline in The New York Times or some such, but I haven’t seen Daybreak do anything in… well… I don’t know how long… that generated this much press interest.  I don’t think EverQuest Next, which goes back to the SOE days, garnered this much attention outside of the usual suspects that keep an eye on the company and its games.

So this seems like a really good sign for Dimensional Ink, Daybreak, and Enad Global 7.  If just a mere mention that a Marvel IP MMO might be coming spreads this far, just imagine what will happen when they actually have a title, a logo, and some art to post.

Enad Global 7 gives some Insight into Future Plans with its Q3 2021 Investor Presentation

Enad Global 7 dropped their Q3 2021 earnings announcement and report on Thursday.

Enad Global 7

I don’t know if things have changed at the company since Ji Ham was put in charge, but Daybreak does seem to be at the center of things at the company.  There is even a chart that puts the watchful eye of the Daybreak logo in a position that can’t help but draw attention to the size of its influence at the company.

None dare meet its terrible gaze

I realize that image is just to show all the things various groups in the company touch, but they could have made a chart that didn’t highlight an oversize Daybreak logo in a circle of light relative to the other parts of the company, but they chose to all the same.  And, in so choosing, it is hard not to read something into it.

Still, if we are getting what turns out to be Daybreak 2.0, at least it is a publicly held version of the company so they have to show up and tell investors and the general public what is going on four times a year.  That would be about four more times a year than privately held version did.

And a Swedish public company.  I guess we have to remember that.  Because if a US company dropped a major announcement on Thanksgiving Day, one would automatically assume a desire to hide something.  But it was just another chilly autumn Thursday in Stockholm.

On the financial side of things the company is very big on showing how much better it did on the revenue front when compare to Q3 2020, with numbers growing over 400%.  This was, of course, before several key acquisitions, including Daybreak, so we’re seeing one of the quirks of corporate accounting where an asset acquired is assumed to be worth exactly what you paid for it… that being how value is determined in the market… so buying Daybreak was a wash and all their revenue is an automatic bonus.

The company continues to emphasize many of the Daybreak brands in the report:

• Key first party brands include:
  • EverQuest, considered to be one of the three most iconic fantasy MMO brands in the
    world together with World of Warcraft and Ultima Online.
  • H1Z1, the very first battle royale game that was credited as one of the inspirations
    for Fortnite, with over 40 million life-to-date (LTD) registrations.
  • Big Blue Bubble’s My Singing Monsters, which has over 82 million LTD registrations
    on mobile and now expanding to PC and console.
• Top tier global third party brands:
  • DC Comics from Warner Brothers with continuing pipeline of content from
    blockbuster feature films and TV shows.
  • The Lord of the Rings, arguably the most iconic classic fantasy IP, primed for
    resurgence with the new Amazon series on its way.
  • The Dungeons & Dragons from Wizards of the Coast, with a world-wide passionate
    fan base and a new feature film on its way.
  • 4game’s third party brands, including Lineage, Black Desert Online, Blade and Soul
    and more.

EverQuest is certainly iconic for those who pay attention to the MMORPG genre, though as a brand it does fall pretty squarely into the realm of “what have you done with it lately?”  The two titles in that brand are still modestly active and get updates, but both also show their age.

And then there is the ongoing wish-casting about H1Z1.  I mean sure, not only did it inspire Fortnite, the guy who led PUBG worked on H1Z1 as well.  But that is all in the past for a brand that by their own accounts nobody is working on.  It is a bit like General Motors reminding us of the Pontiac or Oldsmobile brand because they still sell repair parts for the otherwise discontinues lines.

While the financials are fine, they are a bit boring, because the company is simply doing okay.  Q3 is dull for Daybreak because “summer,” but Q4 will see a big boost with expansions being shipped at players returning to the game. Overall they aren’t setting anything on fire, including themselves, so bravo to them, but the future is where promises lay.  And in the presentation they have a few explicit looks into their plan.

In the near term, which is between now and the end of 2022, the company has the following lined up.

EG7 Q3 2021 slide 17

Not a lot there for Daybreak fans, and I honestly have no insight into My Singing Monsters, but some things are in the queue beside the business as usual updates for current products.

Past that, into what they refer to as the Medium-term, things are a bit more interesting for those of us on the Daybreak desk.

EG7 Q3 2021 slide 17

Medium term isn’t defined, but since they have a column dedicated to 2022, I think it is safe to assume that this means past 2022, so perhaps things that might come to fruition in 2023 or 2024.

First up is LOTRO.  I am not sure where they get that top ten ranking metric, but LOTRO does stand out in many way and it is arguably both the biggest and truest simulation of the works.

But here they double down on one of the early promises of the Daybreak acquisition, a revamp to upgrade visuals, a modernization of the experience, and a release on consoles.  And I guess the medium term time frame may be viable for all of that, though I would push the very end of 2024 as the earliest we might see results.  The problem with an old title with many expansions is the extent of the visuals that need to be upgraded.  There is simply a lot of manual effort that will need to go into that and even if they are ramping up staff right now… and SSG has job openings listed… it will be a long march to get there.

And then there is the console plan, something I dismissed back when they first announced it eleven months back.  It seemed wishful thinking.  But if it is still in the plan, that too feels like a huge project.  Not only do visuals need to be upgraded to work on current generation consoles, but the UI of the game… which people have been complaining about since day one as being sub-par for the genre… will need to be completely redone from scratch.

It honestly feels like they will need to branch the game, that they will need to split off and have Legacy LOTRO with a small caretaker team to keep it going, then focus efforts on what I will call LOTRO Next, where most of the work on the game will happen, which will yield a better looking, but very different version of the game.

That is my prediction anyway.  We shall see if we get another expansion for Legacy LOTRO or if work gets aimed elsewhere.

Then there is DC Universe Online, the “one and only” superhero MMO, so forget about Champions Online or all those attempts to remake City of Heroes, they are all illusory.

DCUO is big on consoles, and was at one point the biggest revenue free to play title on PlayStation.  So investing in it, to bring it up to the standards of the current generation, seems like a good plan.  And they even mark 2023 as a point for upgrades and a big content update.  Also, if you were going to make another superhero title, say one based on the Marvel IP, then it would be good to have an up to date engine and platform with which to work.

And, finally in the medium term, there is Minimal Effect.  Sounds fun.  I’d give it a try.

After that we get to the “Longer Term” plans.

EG7 Q3 2021 slide 17

I am going to guess that longer term means past 2024, so a few years down the road.  In software that is often so far away and subject to so much change that it is generally regarded as tenuous at best.  Roadmaps are often fluid past a certain point and no company promise beyond the six month mark can be counted on.  But you have to at least have a plan.

The two shooters, IGI Origins and 83, don’t interest me, and certainly not if we’re talking about titles three or more years out, but then there is the “Unannounced MMORPG” which, if it is in your slide deck and you’re telling us the IP on which it will be based, is kind of announced.

Dimensional Ink’s Unannounced Project has a logo of sorts

I have said a few times since the EG7 acquisition of Daybreak that this will be the Marvel IP version of DC Universe Online.  I mean, why wouldn’t it be?  DCUO is already the most played title in the Daybreak lineup, it is popular on consoles, it is getting an upgrade to make it look good/play good on current generation consoles, this seems like a gimme.

Sure, what I keep referring to as Marvel Universe Online probably won’t be called exactly that, and it will get some tuning and some differentiation so it won’t feel like a complete knock-off reskin of DCUO… that could go very badly if done in a cheap way… but I remain very firm in my belief that it will be, at its core, a sibling, if not a twin, to the one and only superhero MMO.  Dimensional Ink, the Daybreak studio that does DCUO has a placeholder on its site for this new title and has job listing for it as well.

Anyway, those are my immediate take away thoughts from the Q3 2021 presentation.  There is a lot more in there, but I don’t want to write a book.  Links to the sources and other coverage below.

Related:

• EG7 – Q3 2021 Interim Report
• EG7 – Q3 2021 Presentation
• Massively OP – EG7 Q3 2021
• MMO Fallout – Enad Global 7 Earned Fat Stacks in Q3
• PC Gamer – A Marvel MMO is coming from DCUO Studio
• Kotaku – Devs Behind DC Universe Online Are Working On A Marvel MMO

Ji Ham Speaks about Enad Global 7

I am finally catching up on things that happened a month ago at this point.  In this case there was a change at Enad Global 7 that saw Ji Ham, who was heading up Daybreak, become the acting CEO of the company, displacing the well liked Robin Flodin.

Enad Global 7

This led to an interview with Ji Ham, posted to YouTube, where most of us not only saw him for the first time, but heard his voice for the first time as well… which is a bit odd for somebody who has been CEO of a video game company for six years, but hardly the most unusual thing about the Daybreak era.

So I finally sat down and watched the video.

I haven’t seen much written about the video, and that which I did see dismissed it as a whole lot of nothing.

And, I will attest, if you were expecting some detailed information about the company, its operations, or its games, there wasn’t much to chew on.

That said, the 27 minute video was not completely devoid of information.

Ji Ham’s ascension to the CEO role, which was again stressed as an acting position and that he will not be moving to Stockholm, was attributed to the change in the business model that EG7 is now pursuing.  Having grown through acquisition, the company now has a number of live products generating substantial revenue, meaning a different outlook may have been needed in the leadership position.

There was no mention of Robin Flodin’s interview gaffe, so the party line is apparently this was planned and completely normal.

But, while live games are now part of the mix, the company is still seeking more acquisitions to fill what it sees as holes in its offerings or that would fit well within their portfolio.

I have mentioned in the past that growth through acquisitions is a popular choice for publicly held companies as any asset they buy is always assumed to be worth what they paid for it so there is no hit against margins; writing your own code costs, buying somebody else’s’ code is a wash.

No acquisition targets were mentioned, but I suspect that if you looked at what is missing from their current ecosystem that keeps them from being self-contained you might at least come up with some potential segments.

Which isn’t to say that they are giving up on developing their own titles.  Once again a triple-A title was mentioned, but no specifics were given.  However, I think some of us just assume it is going to be a Marvel version of DC Universe Online.  We shall see.

Long time followers of Daybreak will no doubt be amused that Ji Ham said both that communication from the company had been lacking and that titles in their portfolio had not seen much in the way of investment during the Daybreak era, something EG7 would like to rectify.  Whose fault might that be?

I guess at least he didn’t blame it on Smed.

Acknowledging that the Daybreak portfolio was old… most of the titles are over a decade old, with H1Z1 being the young one in the bunch, having only passed the six year mark back in February… one wonders where they might throw some resources.

He did mention two titles specifically when it came to targets for investment, DC Universe Online and Lord of the Rings Online.

DCUO is the most popular title in the Daybreak lineup, claiming more than 400K monthly active users last year and bringing in more total revenue than any of its siblings according to last December’s reveal. (Though EverQuest still beat it for net earnings.)

DCUO has a lot of players on consoles, and was at one time the top earning free to play title on PlayStation, so worth keeping up to date.  One of the investments it needs is to get it onto the latest generation XBox and PlayStation 5 hardware.   Also, it would totally make sense to invest in it if you were going to make a Marvel version of the game.

As for LOTRO, it was singled out because, in his words, it is the only Tolkien online world currently available.  True enough, that statement.  The problem is that I am not sure EG7 has the resources available to make LOTRO into a viable, competitive title fourteen years down the road.  While the world is beautiful in game, character models, responsiveness, and the general interface was poor relative to the standards of the industry in 2007.  While there have been a few graphical upgrades over the years, the UI and the character models are still garbage and all the more so on any monitor over 1920×1080 in resolution.  And that leaves aside the layers of monetization piled onto the game, where every dialog wants to sell you a short cut to get around whatever effort game play asks of you.

There is no financially viable road forward that fixes all of its fundamental issues… and I am not even going to go into garbage mechanics like legendary items, which they’re kind of hand waving a fix for because they can’t get rid of it as the grind is so horrible that it likely leads more players to the cash shop than anything else… when it made maybe $15 million tops last year.

I know, that sounds like a lot of money.  But Tolkien Enterprises gets their cut right off the top I bet, then there are the servers and infrastructure to maintain and keep up to date, and the staff needed to keep things going as they are, and then the amount needed to keep Jason Epstein and Ji Ham in the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed.  And now the whole thing is owned by a public company, so the pressure to earn is even higher.  The time to invest and fix things is when you’re private and can get away with a few quarters of loss without the market calling for your head.

I’ve spent a lot of time with LOTRO and cherish those memories, but the wide appeal of its theme is held back by the raggedly old mechanics of the title.  Such is life.

Not mentioned, much to my surprise, was H1Z1.  Robin Floodin used to bring up H1Z1 every time he spoke about the titles that EG7 held, promising its player base that they were looking to revive the title.  I guess it is the newest title in the bunch and, for a brief stretch, was the flagship battle royale title, a position in managed to squander and is unlikely ever to recover. (NerdSlayer has a new Death of a Game video about H1Z1 that covers all the main fumbles.)

But perhaps Ji Ham, who was the CEO when H1Z1 flailed, flamed out, and ceased to be a force in the market, knows better than most what its value now is.

Anyway, those are the bits that stuck out for me.  There was more in the interview, including a caution on earnings, but I was mostly interested in the product related side of things.  The YouTube page has bookmarks in the description that divide up the whole thing into the various topics discussed.

The next thing we hear from EG7 is likely to be Q3 earning in about a month.

A Timeline of SOE and Daybreak Games

We are entering a new era for the games of Daybreak which made me think it might be a good time to review the story so far.  We’re around the 25 year mark for when the seeds of the company were planted and, with the Enad Global 7 purchase, the time seems ripe.

• The House that EverQuest Built

First there was EverQuest.

Firiona and friends at launch, 1999

At some point around 1996 John Smedley, working at Sony, managed to get Brad McQuaid, Steve Clover, Bill Trost, and a host of others together to create a 3D online multiplayer fantasy game loosely (or not so loosely in places) based off of Sojourn MUD / TorilMUD.

Launched on March 16, 1999, a variety of Sony organizational names were connected to the game at different times including Sony Interactive Studios America, Verant Interactive, 989 Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment America, Sony Pictures, and Sony Online Entertainment.  My original disk and manual both display the 989 Studios logo prominently and names a couple others in the fine print.  As I mentioned in my 20 year anniversary reflections post about EverQuest, one magazine referred to the company running the game as Sony, Verant, and 989 in different parts of the same issue.  It was a confusing time.

Clarity came eventually though when EverQuest exceeded all expectations for success.  That was a bit of a surprise.  March of 1999 pre-dates the age of influencers and social media.  The internet wasn’t seen as a serious news source, though Matt Drudge breaking the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal had at least made a few start paying attention.  But a lot of us were still getting our gaming news via glossy monthly magazines where full page ads at the covers were the best way to gain attention.

I don’t recall any such ads for the game back in early 1999.  I only knew about the game because almost everybody then active on TorilMUD got invited to beta, usually by Brad McQuaid’s Aradune character in game.  I declined the beta invite, but came for the opening.

Not only were ads scarce, there wasn’t a lot of background to draw attention to the game.  Compare that to what most see as its direct competitor of the era, Ultima Online.  The Ultima franchise had been rolling along for more that 15 years when UO launched in late 1997.  The series spawned a studio, Origin Systems, that created other well known games.  And then there was Lord British, who ended up living in a castle and going into space on the proceeds of his Ultima empire.  UO had the fame, reputation, and lineage that EQ lacked.

And yet, at their respective peaks, EQ would have more than double UO’s subscribers.

EQ seemed to spread by word of mouth.  After buying it at Fry’s on my way home from work on launch day, I came into the office and told a bunch of people about it.  They all went out and bought copies and we ended up playing together.  And they told people and I told more people and others who played told people and soon the people I was telling already knew about it and there was a song “Has anybody seem my corpse?” being passed around and the whole thing had become something of a minor social phenomena.

And its success cemented the idea of online gaming at Sony so that the plethora of names was eventually pared down to Sony Online Entertainment.  25 years down the road from Smed collecting a team to get the ball rolling, this is all still the house that EverQuest built.

• A Timeline of Events

This is not an exhaustive list, and I am not going to try to piece together things that came before March 16, 1999 or betas for various games.  Early access though, that is another story. I am also going to try not to editorialize, which won’t be easy for me.  If I have missed anything important, drop me a note or a comment and I’ll update the post.

• 1999
  • Mar 16 – EverQuest launches with a base monthly subscription is $9.89 a month; servers are quickly overloaded and a long series of new servers kicks off
  • Jul 28 – MMORTS Sovereign announced
• 2000
  • Apr 24 – The Ruins of Kunark, the first EverQuest expansion, launches
  • Oct 5 – SOE acquires Infantry
  • Dec 5 – The Scars of Velious, EQ expansion #2
• 2001
  • Apr 17 – Cosmic Rift launches
  • Dec 4 – The Shadows of Luclin, EQ expansion #3
• 2002
  • Apr 25 -The subscription rate for EverQuest increased to $12.95
  • Oct 29 – The Planes of Power, EQ expansion #4
• 2003
  • Feb 11 – Sovereign MMORTS officially cancelled
  • Feb 11 – EverQuest Online Adventures launches on PlayStation 2
  • Feb 25 – The Legacy of Ykesha, EQ expansion #5
  • May 20 – PlanetSide launches
  • Jun 24 – EverQuest Macintosh Edition launches
  • Jun 26 – Star Wars Galaxies launches
  • Sep 9 – Lost Dungeons of Norrath, EQ expansion #6
  • Nov – Star Chamber: The Harbinger Saga launches
  • Nov 17 – EverQuest Online Adventures: Frontiers expansion launches
  • Dec 1 – Lords of EverQuest, a single player Windows RTS, launches
• 2004
  • Feb 10 – Gates of Discord, EQ expansion #7
  • Feb 10 – Champions of Norrath launches on PlayStation 2
  • Mar – EverQuest subscribers hit a peak of 550K
  • Sep 14 – Omens of War, EQ expansion #8
  • Oct 27 – SWG Jump to Lightspeed expansion
  • Nov 8 – EverQuest II launches
  • Nov 12 – A second round of EQII servers are launched to absorb the surge of new players
  • Nov – SOE introduces the Station Access plan that gives players a combined subscription to EQ, EQII, and Planetside for $22 a month
  • Nov – EQII subscribers who opt for Station Access get two extra character slots on their account and access to the EQII Players stats page
  • Dec – EQII is down for almost two days as an update breaks the live servers
• 2005
  • Jan – SOE Announces SWG is being added to Station Access
  • Feb 7 – Champions: Return to Arms is launched on PlayStation 2
  • Feb 8 – EQ server consolidation starts with the four PvP servers being combined into the single Zek server
  • Feb 15 – Dragons of Norrath, EQ expansion #9
  • Feb 17 – SOE temporarily adds the /pizza command to EverQuest II as a cross promotion with Pizza Hut allowing players to order a pizza from within the game
  • Mar 21 – The Bloodline Chronicles, the first EQII adventure pack launches
  • Mar 22 – Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade, a PSP title, launches
  • Apr – SOE begins a series of EQ server merges to bolster the populations, which runs on until the end of June
  • Apr – EverQuest II – East, developed for China, Taiwan, and South Korea, launches
  • May 5 – SWG Rage of the Wookies expansion launches
  • Jun 28 – The Splitpaw Saga, the second EQII adventure pack launches
  • Jul 20 – EQII gets new servers, Shadowhaven, The Bazaar, and The Vox PvP under the Station Exchange program, which allows players to sell in-game items for real world money; players are allowed to transfer characters there from other live servers
  • Aug 15 – SOE takes over operation of The Matrix Online
  • Sep 13 – Depths of Darkhollow, EQ expansion #10
  • Sep 13 – Desert of Flames, the first EQII expansion
  • Nov 1 – SWG Trials of Obi-wan expansion launches
  • Nov 8 – SWG New Game Enhancements update lands, changing character progression
  • Nov 9 – The “SOGA” character models from EverQuest II – East become an available option in EverQuest II
• 2006
  • Jan – SOE announces they will be merging 10 low population EQII servers into 10 medium population servers because players are “too spread out” on the low population servers.
  • Feb 17 – Shadowhaven Station Exchange server is merged into The Bazaar server
  • Feb 21 – Prophecy of Ro, EQ expansion #11
  • Feb 21 – Kingdom of Sky, EQII expansion #2
  • Mar 28 – Untold Legends: The Warrior’s Code, a PSP title, launches
  • Mar 29 – EverQuest II – East is shut down, with all Chinese accounts transferred to the Mistmoore server, all Taiwanese accounts to the Najena server, and all Korean accounts to the Unrest server
  • Jun – EQ launches the first progression servers for the game, The Combine and The Sleeper, which let players play though all of the game expansions in order
  • Jun 14 – The Fallen Dynasty, the third EQII adventure pack launches
  • Sep 19, The Serpent’s Spine, EQ expansion #12
  • Nov 13 – Echoes of Faydwer, EQII expansion #3
  • Nov 15 – Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom, a PSP title, launches
• 2007
  • Jan 30 – Vanguard: Saga of Heroes launches with SOE as publisher
  • Feb 13 – The Buried Sea, EQ expansion #13
  • May 9 – Legends of Norrath collectible card game is launched, running within EQ and EQII
  • May 15 – SOE takes over operations for Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
  • Mar 21 – The Sleeper EQ progression server is merged into The Combine server
  • Apr 30 – The EQII Darathar– UK PvP, Gorenaire– FR PvP, and Talendor– DE PvP servers are merged into the Venekor – RP PvP server
  • Jul 11 – The Agency is announced
  • Jul 19 – EQuinox, the official print magazine of EverQuest II is announced with issue #1 featuring Rise of Kunark information and beta access
  • Oct – Station Access pricing peaks at $30 a month for subscription access to all SOE titles including The Matrix Online and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
  • Nov 13 – Secrets of Faydwer, EQ expansion #14
  • Nov 13 – Rise of Kunark – EQII expansion #4
  • Dec – SOE is caught after moving the level 60 Unholy Trinity guild off of the test server to a live server, an action against stated company policy and not something ever made available to the average player, causing a fierce reaction from players
  • Dec – A false rumor spreads that Zapak Digital Entertainment is planning to purchase SOE and its games for $300 million, an amount close to what the company will sell for in December of 2020
• 2008
  • Jan 22 – Pirates of the Burning Sea launches with SOE as publisher
  • Feb 14 – EQuinox issue #2 is announced, featuring Legends of Norrath cards
  • Apr 16 – LiveGamer is brought in to run financial transaction for the Station Exchange RMT servers The Bazaar and The Vox PvP
    
  • ~Sep – EQuinox issue #3 is cancelled and the magazine idea is scrapped
  • Oct 21 – Seeds of Destruction, EQ expansion #15
  • Oct 24 – The EQII Venekor– RP PvP is merged into the Nagefen, the final remaining PvP server
  • Nov 18 – The Shadow Odyssey, EQII expansion #5
  • Dec – SOE introduces Station Cash, a virtual currency, and an in-game cash shop in EQ and EQII
• 2009
  • Jan 23 – SOE games become available on Steam starting with EverQuest and EverQuest II
  • Apr 28 – Free Realms launches
  • Jul 31 – The Matrix Online is shut down
  • Dec 15 – Underfoot, EQ expansion #16
• 2010
  • Feb 16 – Sentinal’s Fate, EQII expansion #6
  • Mar 4 – The Combine EQ progression server is merged into the Druzzil Ro live server, ending the first retro server run for the company
  • Apr – SOE tries a new EQII Passport subscription plan where for just $5.00 a month you can play for three consecutive days during a single month
  • May 5 – SOE announces The Agency: Covert Ops, a free to play title on Facebook
  • Jun 10 – Tanarus, a title that predated EverQuest was shut down
  • Jun 22 – EQ server merges come again, paring down the server count by ten as low population servers are merged into more populated ones
  • Jul – EverQuest II Extended, a free to play version of EQII launches
  • Aug – Plans for EverQuest Next announced at FanFest
  • Sep 15 – Star Wars: The Clone Wars Adventures launches
  • Oct 12 – House of Thule, EQ expansion #17
• 2011
  • Jan 11 – DC Universe Online launches on Windows and PlayStation 3
  • Feb 15 – The Fippy Darkpaw EQ time locked progression server launches, with the Vulak’Aerr server being added soon thereafter to handle the crush of players (I have a whole timeline for those servers)
  • Feb 22 – Destiny of Velious, EQII expansion #7
  • Mar 31 – The Agency is officially cancelled
  • Apr – Flying mounts introduced into EQII
  • May – SOE games are down for almost two weeks as part of the PlayStation Network security breach in which personal data from a reported 24.6 million accounts were compromised
  • Jun – At E3 SOE announced that pricing for Station Access, now called SOE All Access, would drop from $30 to $20 a month, but extra character slots for EQ, EQII, and Vanguard would no longer be part of the plan
  • Aug – SOE finally gets a unified server status page
  • Nov 1 – DC Universe Online goes free to play
  • Nov 15 – Veil of Alaris, EQ expansion #18
  • Dec 6 – Age of Discovery, EQII expansion #8, which also ushers in the free to play era of the game as EverQuest II Extended is folded into the live server list
  • Dec 15 – Star Wars Galaxies is shut down
  • Dec 18 – The Vox PvP Station Exchange server for EQII is merged into the Nagefen server
  • Dec 21 – The Bazaar Station Exchange server for EQII is merged into the Freeport server ending the Station Exchange program
• 2012
  • Feb – SOE announces it is selling its EU customer accounts to a German media company, ProSiebenSat.1
  • Mar 16 – EverQuest goes free to play
  • Mar 29 – EverQuest Online Adventures shuts down on PlayStation 2
  • Mar 29 – Infantry is shut down
  • Mar 29 – Cosmic Rift is shut down
  • Mar 29 – Star Chamber: The Harbinger Saga is shut down
  • Aug 7 – Vanguard: Saga of Heroes goes free to play (a week earlier than planned)
  • Aug 7 – SOEmote is introduced to EverQuest II
  • Sep – SOE introduces Player Studio for EQII, which allows players to create cosmetic items to sell in the in-game cash shop, for which they will be paid a cut of the sale
  • Nov – SOE introduces Krono for EQ and EQII, an in-game item that can be redeemed for 30 days of subscription time, which users can purchase for real world cash and sell at the broker to other players for in-game currency
  • Nov 13 – Chains of Eternity, EQII expansion #9
  • Nov 20 – PlanetSide 2 launches
  • Nov 28 – Rain of Fear, EQ expansion #19
• 2013
  • Jan 30 – SOE publishes the import Wizardry Online as a F2P title
  • Jan 31 – Pirates of the Burning Sea ceases to be published by SOE
  • Aug – A new vision/plan for EverQuest Next is announced at FanFest, which includes the involvement of Storybricks
  • Aug – The FanFest presentation mentions a dev tool EverQuest Next called Landmark
  • Sep 23 – SOE publishes the import Dragon’s Prophet as a F2P title
  • Oct 8 – Call of the Forsaken, EQ expansion #20
  • Nov 12 – Tears of Veeshan, EQII expansion #10
  • Nov 13 – SOE starts selling early access packs to EverQuest Next Landmark
  • Nov 15 – DC Universe Online launches on PlayStation 4
  • Nov 18 – EverQuest Macintosh Edition is shut down
• 2014
  • Jan – Station Access/SOE All Access pricing drops to $15 a month, the price of a single game subscription, but keeps the 500 Station Case stipend after the forums erupt when Smed suggests they may remove that benefit
  • Jan 24 – SOE announced they will be shutting down Free Realms, Star Wars: The Clone Wars Adventures, Wizardry Online, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, which is seen as the reason they have cut the price of SOE All Access
  • Mar – EverQuest Next Landmark becomes just Landmark
  • Mar 31 – Free Realms is shut down
  • Mar 31 – Star Wars: The Clone Wars Adventures is shut down
  • Apr 10 – H1Z1 is announced, a zombie horror title oddly dedicated to SWG players
  • Jun 18 – The ProSiebenSat.1 experiment ends and all EU accounts are transitioned back to SOE
  • Jul 31 – Wizardry Online is shut down
  • Jul 31 – Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is shut down
  • Oct 28 – The Darkened Sea, EQ expansion #21
  • Nov 11 – Altar of Malice, EQII expansion #11
• 2015
  • Jan 15 – H1Z1 releases as early access
  • Jan 22 – The class action suit for the PlayStation/SOE security breach of May 2011 is resolved, awarding the lawyers $2.75 million and each affected player 450 station cash… but only for US players and only if you filled out a form and could prove you were affected
  • Feb 2 – Sony announces it has sold SOE to Columbus Nova and the organization will be known as Daybreak Game Company going forward
  • Apr 28 – The Rum Cellar, the fourth EQII adventure pack launches
  • Apr 30 – Daybreak acknowledged and blessed the existence of the Project 1999 EQ retro server being developed by a private group, with the P1999 team and the Daybreak EQ team coordinating updates so as not to overlap each other
  • May 22 – EQ opens the Ragefire progression server, the start of a regular run of special servers that help boost the game’s popularity by pulling back many lapsed players
  • Jul 24 – Daybreak announces that long time studio head John Smedley is leaving the company, Russel Shanks steps up to take over his role
  • Jul 24 – EQII launches the Stormhold progression server and Deathtoll PvP server, the first retro servers for the game
  • Aug 21 – EQII announces the Drunder server, where rule breakers will be sent to play and no customer support will be available
  • Oct – Nine of the lower population EQII servers, including the final PvP server Nagefen, are merged down to three PvE servers, all with new names (Maj’dul, Halls of Fate, and Skyfire), while the Antonia Bayle server remains unto itself
  • Nov 16 – Dragon’s Prophet is shut down
  • Nov 17 – Terrors of Thalumbra, EQII expansion #12
  • Nov 18 – The Broken Mirror, EQ expansion #22
• 2016
  • Feb 8 – H1Z1 King of the Kill the battle royale game and H1Z1 Just Survive, the co-op zombie horror game, are split into two products, both remain in early access
  • Mar 8 – The EQII Deathtoll PvP retro server is shut down
  • Mar 11 – EverQuest Next officially cancelled, leaving Landmark the remaining active part of that project.
  • Apr 29 – DC Universe Online launches on XBox One
  • Jun 10 – Landmark leaves early access and goes live
  • Jul 1 – PlanetSide is shut down
  • Aug 17 – Legends of Norrath is shut down
  • Nov 15 – Kunark Ascending, EQII expansion #13
  • Nov 16 – Empires of Kunark, EQ expansion #23
  • Dec 19 – Daybreak acquires Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeon & Dragons Online from Warner, setting them up under the name Standing Stone Games, never mentioning in public that they are the actual owners
• 2017
  • Feb 21 – Landmark is shut down
  • Jul 31 – LOTRO launches the Mordor expansion
  • Sep 22 – The Vulak’Aerr EQ time locked progression server is merged into the Fippy Darkpaw server
  • Oct – H1Z1 King of the Kill renamed H1Z1 again due to a desire to release the game in China, where having “kill” in a game name is frowned upon by government censors
  • Nov 28 – Planes of Prophecy, EQII expansion #14
  • Dec 12 – Ring of Scale, EQ expansion #24
• 2018
  • Feb 28 – H1Z1 leaves early access and goes live
  • Apr 24 – In response to a question about Russian sanctions Daybreak issues a statement declaring it was never owned by Columbus Nova, in open contradiction to three years of information, and was always solely owned by Jason Epstein
  • Apr 24 – Daybreak removes all references to Columbus Nova from its web site and attempts to edit the Wikipedia page about the company to hide any Columbus Nova connection
  • Aug 7 – H1Z1 launches on PlayStation 4
  • Sep 4 – The EQII progression server Stormhold is merged into the Antonia Bayle server, ending its run
  • Sep 6 – Daybreak announces a deal with NantWorks to create NantMobile G which will take over H1Z1 on PC with a plan to revitalize it, starting by rebranding it as Z1 Battle Royale
  • Sep 6 – NantMobile G project also proposes mobile versions of Z1 Battle Royale and EverQuest
  • Oct 24 – H1Z1 Just Survive is shut down
  • Nov 13 – Chaos Descending, EQII expansion #15
  • Dec 11 – The Burning Lands, EQ expansion #25
  • Dec 14 – Planetside Arena is announced, an attempt to bring battle royale to PlanetSide 2, with pre-orders for early access for sale
  • Dec 18 – Daybreak offers 4,000 lifetime subscriptions for sale at $299 each
  • Dec 24 – Daybreak announces that they have sold out the 4,000 lifetime subscriptions
  • Dec 28 – Daybreak puts 6,000 more life time subscriptions up for sale through Dec. 31st
• 2019
  • Feb 18 – PlanetSide Arena launch is delayed until summer, allegedly to have a simultaneous launch on PlayStation 4, all pre-orders are refunded
  • Jul 11 – After over a year being offline, Daybreak announces that Player Studio for EQII has been shut down
  • Apr 6 – NantMobile G hands Z1 Battle Royale back to Daybreak having failed to revitalize the game, after which little is heard about the PC version
  • Aug 6 – DC Universe Online launches on Nintendo Switch
  • Aug 30 – A PlanetSide Arena roadmap is released with plans for early access soon, with an official launch in 2020, PC only
  • Sep 19 – PlanetSide Arena arrives in early access just barely making the declared “summer” launch plan
  • Oct 21 – A PlanetSide producer’s letter states that PlanetSide Arena is a stepping stone towards PlanetSide 3
  • Nov 5 – LOTRO launches the Minas Morgul expansion
  • Dec 14 – Daybreak announces that PlanetSide Arena will be shut down in January
  • Dec 17 – Blood of Luclin, EQII expansion #16
  • Dec 18 – Torment of Velious, EQ expansion #26
• 2020
  • Jan 10 – PlanetSide Arena is shut down
  • Jan 21 – Daybreak announces a series of sub-studios, with Darkpaw Games responsible for EverQuest and EverQuest II, Dimensional Ink handling DC Universe Online, and Rogue Planet Games handling PlanetSide 2
  • May 20 – The Fippy Darkpaw EQ time locked progression server ends its nine year run as it is merged into the Vox live server
  • Oct 20 – LOTRO launches the War of Three Peaks expansion
  • Dec 1 – Enad Global 7 (EG7) announces plans to acquire Daybreak
  • Dec 2 – EG7 presents an unprecedented array of previously private information about Daybreak to its board, shareholders, and the general public proving, if nothing else, that the company made money
  • Dec 8 – Claws of Veeshan, EQ expansion #27
  • Dec 15 – Reign of Shadows, EQII expansion #17
  • Dec 23 – EG7 completes the acquisition of Daybreak Game Company

And that brings us up into the new year.  We shall see what 2021 and beyond holds for the company

• Sources

The joy of me blogging the way I do is that I have a blog post that corresponds to most every item on the above list that happened in the last decade.  I considered linking to each and every one, but decided against it.  You can use the search box at the top of the page if you want to find posts here about things like EQII Passport.

Before 2010 I was more chaotic in my blogging and, of course, before September 2006 there was no blog, so nothing to reference.  Fortunately, I had done a post about SOE and its MMORPGs back in 2016 where I had recorded the status of their games, and had researched a bunch of other items in the past.  This blog isn’t all just about Blackrock Depths and World War Bee.

And, where that failed, Wikipedia remains a wonderful source.  There are well maintained pages about most of the games and lists of all the expansions for both EverQuest and EverQuest II that helped me quite a bit.  And over at Daybreak there is even a server merge page for EverQuest and another for EverQuest II servers deep in their site.  There are some errors, but the dates seem solid.

As for what to include, I am obviously biased towards the games I play or played.  I did try to include every paid expansion for games, as those were generally pretty easy to find.  Game content updates are more obscure, though somebody has charted all of the episode drops for DC Universe Online on that Wikipedia page.  I just wasn’t that dedicated to the post.  I started getting into special servers, but decided once they became an annual thing in 2015, I declared them as such and moved on.

Daybreak Revealed in Enad Global 7 Presentation

As I mentioned yesterday, we did not know much about Daybreak Game Company over its close to six years of existence.  It was a privately held firm and was reluctant to be straight with outsiders as to who even owned the company.  And before that, when it was SOE, its details were hidden within a giant conglomerate where it was such a small piece of the pie that it did not even get its own line item.

So having Daybreak purchased by a small public company, where it will be a large part of the pie and which needs to disclose details to the public means that we’re learning more about the company this week than we have known for ages.  Roll on Enad Global 7.

Enad Global 7

Yesterday’s press release about the acquisition gave us some fresh information and confirmed things we suspected, like the fact that Daybreak owned Standing Stone Games.  But there is more to be seen.  Over on their investor relations page you will find a presentation by EG7 about the state of Daybreak and its games that is stunning in its clarity after all these years.

It is so meaty that I downloaded it immediately lest it be posted in error and disappear.

The presentation starts by introducing EG7’s strategy and execution of their plan so far, which is an interesting read showing their acquisition pace up to this point.  And then there is the About Daybreak section, which starts with a nicely summarized history of the company.

Page 12 – a Brief History of SOE/Daybreak

Just enough detail I think.  A few side ventures are missing, and there is a whole book to be written about the strange path of H1Z1 over the last five years, but otherwise the basics are laid out.

They mention the licensed IPs the company has, as well as the valuable IPs Daybreak has created.

Page 14 – Valuable home grown IPs

EverQuest has booked about a billion dollars in revenue over its life.  Not bad.  A lot of games never come close to that number or 21 years of longevity.  The H1Z1 notes are a bit sad… inspired actually successful titles.  Sad enough that they stop mentioning H1Z1 after that.  And I still have a retort to that PlanetSide 2 world record which was a planned event and not any sort of organic player surge.

Cool stuff so far.  And then we get the real dirt!  Actual numbers about earnings and players.

Page 15 – Year to Date numbers as of Sep. 30, 2020

There are some surprises there, though not many.  We had been told that EverQuest was still pretty strong and it was implied that it was doing better than EverQuest II.  But now we know where EQII ranks in the overall lineup, which I guess is ahead of H1Z1, which doesn’t even get a mention.

And then there is DC Universe Online.  Smed, back in the day, told us that it was the top free to play game on PlayStation, and I guess it has held on to a solid base of players.  But if you want that all in chart form, there is a page for that.

Page 16 – Revenue and Earnings compared YTD through Sep. 30 2020

DC Universe Online has the highest revenues, but when it comes to earnings after expenses EverQuest is out in front.  That’s the joke.  A 21 year old game brings home the bacon.

Years ago Michael Zenke had been to SOE and was asking them about why they kept on with EverQuest when you could argue that EverQuest II was a better, or at least more up to date game.  He told me that EQ was so cheap to run that it was going to be profitable to keep going for a long, long time.  And here we are.

That DCUO isn’t at the top of the earnings is likely an indication that it remains strongest on the PlayStation, where it has to give Sony a cut of the revenue from the cash shop.

The presentation digs into further detail.  While the games still attract new players, a majority of the player base has been playing their game of choice for more than three years.

On the money front, the average monthly revenue per paying user for 2020 so far looks pretty strong.

Page 17 – ARPPU YTD through Sep. 30, 2020

Some whales out there spending money.  Of course, that is just the count among users that pay, and the conversion to paying user is important.

Page 17 – Payer conversion rate – YTD through Sep. 30, 2020

For EQ and EQII that probably translates largely to subscribers through the All Access program.  EQ just beats EQII on revenue because it has a lot more players.  Likewise, DCUO has the most players by far, so even at a much smaller conversion rate it makes more money.

I think the lesson here is more players is better if you want to survive.

The presentation also has some plans for the future.  They want to do an upgrade for DCUO to make it look and play better on the new generation of consoles by this time next year.  They also want to spruce up LOTRO as they see a possible boon in Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings TV series.  There is even an unannounced new project.  Maybe it is related to the Marvel IP license Daybreak apparently holds.

The plans and view of the combined company are something as well.  As far as revenue goes, EG7 buying Daybreak pretty much doubles the size of the company in staff and revenue.

Page 27 – YTD revenue for EG7 groups

That is a big bite.  Daybreak’s ongoing success will very much influence EG7’s success.  They aren’t buying the company to neglect it.

While the era of the Jason Epstein Daybreak will end on December 31st, Daybreak will continue to exist as an entity withing EG7.  Within the corporate structure the Daybreak stuff will have its own area.

Page 28 – The Daybreak Structure

I am curious as to whether or not that was the actual structure within Daybreak today simply being grafted on to the EG7 tree.  I know Jen Chan let slip at one point about working with the SSG team on some things. (No location for Cold Iron Studios on that chart though, so no idea still if it was part of the sale and too small to mention, was folded in with Dimensional Ink due to the Cryptic background of both groups, or was retained by Jason Epstein.)

As for why keep that structure, that is certainly the best plan for the short term.  When you have an asset that needs to keep performing you do not introduce chaos as your first step in integrating.  Things will likely change over time.

Daybreak itself will likely remain a legal entity for a long time.  Having been through many mergers and acquisitions over the last 30 years… on average that has happened in a way that involved me directly about every three years over that time… there are a lot of reasons to not simply dissolve a corporate entity.  There are a lot of contracts and agreements made in the name of that company that have to be transferred over time, and the other side of the agreement doesn’t care about the change.  So you wait until a contract comes up for renewal and then you transfer it to the new owning company.  That can easily take a decade to work itself out.

And Daybreak, for all its foibles over the last six years, remains the unifying identity for the teams under it.  That is who they are in the EG7 ecosystem.

Page 24 – EG7’s world wide organization

That big owlbear eye that is the Daybreak logo will be looking out at us for a while longer.

Related posts:

• MMO Fallout – Fun Fact: Daybreak has a Marvel License
• Massively OP – Studio Heads Reassure Players about Daybreak Sale
• Massively OP – Everything we just learned about Daybreak thanks to EG7
• Yeebo Fernbottom – EG7, The Future of DDO and LOTRO
• Contains Moderate Peril – LOTRO, Daybreak Game Company, and Enad Global 7
• Eurogamer – EverQuest is bigger than EverQuest II
• Inventory Full – Otha Fish or You Can’t Get (All Your) Blood From A (Standing) Stone