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Daybreak Games Restructured: EverQuest, PlanetSide, & DCUO Updates
Video game developer Daybreak Games has announced a restructuring of its development team into three distinct branches. Daybreak Games was founded as a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment but broke from them in 2015. It has since made a name for itself with massively multiplayer online titles like DC Universe Online, on top of Z1 Battle Royale, and the PlanetSide franchise. The studio also acquired the publishing rights to Dungeons and Dragons Online, which it has been maintaining with new content since.
Daybreak Games, originally Sony Online Entertainment, is perhaps best known for EverQuest, which released in 1999 and was the first commercially successful 3D MMORPG and an inspiration to popular MMOs like World of Warcraft, a juggernaut which is one of the best in the MMO industry today. While its popularity has since waned considerably, and attempts to revive it haven't always met with great success, Daybreak Games is still operating EverQuest, along with its sequel EverQuest II, which was released in 2004. In addition to this genre-defining title, Daybreak Games has had success with PlanetSide 2, a first-person MMO which currently holds the Guinness World Record for largest first-person battle, with 1158 recorded participants.
This month Daybreak Games has announced that it is restructuring their internal studios, branching them into three teams; Dimensional Ink Games, Darkpaw Games, and Rogue Planet Games. These teams are referred to by Daybreak as "individual creative franchise studios" and have each been assigned distinct Daybreak projects to focus their attentions on. Dimensional Ink Games is operating DC Universe Online, as well as another as yet unrevealed action MMO. Darkpaw is overseeing the EverQuest franchise, while Rogue Planet is developing a new massively multiplayer FPS after doing work on PlanetSide 2.
Daybreak has announced that all three studios will have a considerable degree of autonomy, with the freedom to develop these and future projects and hire new talent as they see fit. This announcement comes months after multiple employees were fired in October, which Daybreak has confirmed was part of the process of branching into separate development teams. While it is unknown how many employees were laid off during this restructuring, Daybreak has said that it is "doing what we can to support them during this challenging time." Additionally, in all of this restructuring, there's no news about Z1 Battle Royale, a free to play online title which has had a tumultuous development history since its original release as one half of an online survival game called H1Z1.
It's unclear what this means in the long run for Daybreak Games. The studio has said that the establishment of these individual teams will "allow us to highlight their expertise, better showcase the games they work on, and ultimately provide tailored experiences for our players." It remains to be seen how this will impact the development and status of these online titles in the future, as well as the new projects hinted at during the announcement. Daybreak's titles may not be the most played online experiences in the gaming world today, but they are solid titles that have provided hours of enjoyment for fans around the world, and the legacy of EverQuest alone makes it certain that the fate of Daybreak Games is a development worth following as the development team fractures its way into 2020.
