Sony Online Entertainment sold off to venture capital firm

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Jedis
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Sony Online Entertainment sold off to venture capital firm

Post by Jedis »

Dear Players, Partners and Friends,

Today, we are pleased to announce that we have been acquired by Columbus Nova, an investment management firm well known for its success with its existing portfolio of technology, media and entertainment focused companies. This means that effective immediately SOE will operate as an independent game development studio where we will continue to focus on creating exceptional online games for players around the world, and now as a multi-platform gaming company. Yes, that means PlayStation and Xbox, mobile and more!

As part of this transition, SOE will now become Daybreak Game Company. This name embodies who we are as an organization, and is a nod to the passion and dedication of our employees and players. It is also representative of our vision to approach each new day as an opportunity to move gaming forward.

So what exactly does this mean for you? It will be business as usual and all SOE games will continue on their current path of development and operation. In fact, we expect to have even more resources available to us as a result of this acquisition. It also means new exciting developments for our existing IP and games as we can now fully embrace the multi-platform world we are living in.

Our games and players are the heart and soul of our organization, and we are committed to maintaining our portfolio of online games and pushing the limits of where we can take online gaming together.

Thank you for your continued support. See you in game!

The Team at Daybreak
Source: https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/inde ... any.217508

What do you think this means for EverQuest?
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Voragath
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Re: Sony Online Entertainment sold off to venture capital fi

Post by Voragath »

I've been following this. I'm not so sure about all this and now the firings; not that SOE didn't hire then fire people. This company is a profit driven company and seems more interested in squeezing out a larger profit margin and that's it. If things don't work out, they'll just sell it off and then will start the revolving door.

At this point, I'm hoping they hang on because a revolving door squelches progress. A profit driven company means all bets are off and ANY of the games can become heavy handed microtransaction fests--all the promises from SOE are no longer valid.
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Danille
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Re: Sony Online Entertainment sold off to venture capital fi

Post by Danille »

Looks like they are getting rid of the higher compensated folks first, who are not critical to gaming operations. Next they cut the folks who were considered not vital, like the community relations folks, and fan faire type support staff. Then it looks like they have a set number or percentage driven number of folks to cut with regards to staffing levels overall. Then there was some fallout from the folks who took packages to resign.

All in all it is a sad situation.

in 30-60 days we should know more once the dust settles enough for them to start announcing future plans.
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Jedis
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Re: Sony Online Entertainment sold off to venture capital fi

Post by Jedis »

Here's the list of folks to have been released so far:

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Voragath
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Re: Sony Online Entertainment sold off to venture capital fi

Post by Voragath »

The loss of Jansan is going to hurt. I didn't know Rytan was still about for EQ 1. I see a lot of loss to EQNext and that is very bad news. For community relations, I liked Brasse, Amnerys, and Ashlanne but it's no surprise some community relations were cut as they really aren't critical to the game itself. The loss of Ngreth is no surprise either; his fall really started when he was promoted from tradeskills (imo, others will say different lol).

The core of EQ seems to have held together so that's good news for us but I have been looking forward to EQNext-it looks like I'll have to give up on that. EQNext is just going to be a thing to check out when/if it ever happens.

Wonder when we get the news EQ is turning to a full microtransaction model :cry:
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