Poll - How do you feel about SOE being sold? (1 Viewer)

SOE sold off by Sony, picked up by investment firm "Columbus Nova"

Holy shit, this came out of left field.


http://www.polygon.com/2015/2/2/796...inment-sold-off-by-sony-renamed-daybreak-game

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Sony Online Entertainment, developer of EverQuest, PlanetSide, DC Universe Online and the recently released H1Z1, has been sold by Sony to investment firm Columbus Nova, SOE announced today. The developer will now operate as an independent game studio under a new name, Daybreak Game Company.

"We are excited to join Columbus Nova's impressive roster of companies," said John Smedley, president of Daybreak Game Company. "They have a proven track record in similar and related industries and we are eager to move forward to see how we can push the boundaries of online gaming. We will continue to focus on delivering exceptional games to players around the world, as well as bringing our portfolio to new platforms, fully embracing the multi-platform world in which we all live."

Daybreak Game Company will continue to work on H1Z1, EverQuest Next, EverQuest Landmark and other game projects that started at SOE. Now that the studio is independent of Sony, it will develop its titles for Xbox and mobile platforms, not just PlayStation and PC.

"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," the developer said in a post on Reddit. "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."

"Can't wait to make Xbox games," John Smedley said on Twitter. He later assured fans that "All of our games are still here and will continue to be."

Sony Online Entertainment has developed online games since 1996, including EverQuest, EverQuest 2, Star Wars Galaxies, DC Universe Online, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, PlanetSide, PlanetSide 2 and more. The company is currently in development on PlanetSide 2 for PlayStation 4, H1Z1 and new EverQuest games.

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Players are quite a bit more skeptical,

https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...ainment-becomes-daybreak-game-company.217508/

Re: SOE sold off by Sony to investment firm "Columbus Nova".

Hmm what will happen to the krono system.

Re: SOE sold off by Sony to investment firm "Columbus Nova".

Fuck fuck fuck, this is seriously bad news.

http://www.cifc.com/about-cifc/board-of-directors/andrew-intrater Columbus Nova is the U.S.-based affiliate of the Renova Group of companies, one of the largest Russian strategic investors in the metallurgical, oil, machine engineering, mining, chemical, construction, housing & utilities and financial sectors

These kind of investors care nothing about the game, it has to make money or be gone from their portfolio within 2-3 years.

I have first and second hand experience in companies being bought up by "investors" it never ends well for the customers.

The best case scenario is they stop developing new expansions and just let the servers run while they make money.
Worst case scenario - shutdown.

Chances of extra development resources for EQ < 10 %.

The only hope is that EQ is still minting money.

Re: SOE sold off by Sony to investment firm &quot;Columbus Nova&quot;.

playj said:

one of the largest Russian strategic investors in the metallurgical, oil, machine engineering, mining, chemical, construction, housing & utilities and financial sectors

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RedGuides has been long awaiting our Russian overlords, &#1087;&#1088;&#1080;&#1074;&#1077;&#1090;&#1089;&#1090;&#1074;&#1086;&#1074;&#1072;&#1090;&#1100;!

Re: SOE sold off by Sony, picked up by investment firm &quot;Columbus Nova&quot;

It looks like P99 may be getting a little bit busy in the next year or so if things go bad .

Re: SOE sold off by Sony, picked up by investment firm &quot;Columbus Nova&quot;

I know people love to see skies falling, but just a reminder:

EQ 1 is one of the bigger assets in that sale, and likely one of SOE's most profitable.

Look at the number of servers & populations for each game,

https://www.soe.com/status

Based just on servers (which I admit doesn't tell us much, but it's something) EQ 1 is second only to H1Z1.

Re: SOE sold off by Sony, picked up by investment firm &quot;Columbus Nova&quot;

Not a bad idea though to open more content . I mean I love classic eq but even that gets old after a while

Re: SOE sold off by Sony to investment firm &quot;Columbus Nova&quot;.

beastdaddy said:

Hmm what will happen to the krono system.

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"There are no plans to change Krono in any way." - Roshen

Re: SOE sold off by Sony, picked up by investment firm &quot;Columbus Nova&quot;

This mean Everquest Next is getting shelved?

Re: SOE sold off by Sony, picked up by investment firm &quot;Columbus Nova&quot;

I think this is a good thing overall, but I bet ole Smedley is sweating bullets. The first place these people look to cut the fat are the leadership (especially folks like Smed), and then look to see how profitable they actually are. EQ is probably around 50,000 active subscribers (which is about $750,000) per month. That isn't a bad pull, but with all the dead weight in the higher up positions it won't be releasing any more expansions as it stands now. They will probably keep the Krono, but I'm not sure about the All Access System. This is probably my biggest worry.

Re: SOE sold off by Sony, picked up by investment firm &quot;Columbus Nova&quot;

great news now somone will actually hold soes feet to fire and maybe get them to stop making stupid decisions and make happy paying customers

Re: SOE sold off by Sony, picked up by investment firm &quot;Columbus Nova&quot;

I would be more worried about how the new company is going to handle 3rd party software like MQ2 and cheating.

Re: SOE sold off by Sony, picked up by investment firm &quot;Columbus Nova&quot;

Maskoi said:

I would be more worried about how the new company is going to handle 3rd party software like MQ2 and cheating.

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Just name the new software, MQbear and BearAssist - should be fine.

Let's take the mq2 community's temperature. How do you guys feel? (poll at top) This could be a huge change for Everquest, both the game we play and the future franchise.

Re: SOE sold off by Sony, picked up by investment firm &quot;Columbus Nova&quot;

Arcane1 said:

Just name the new software, MQbear and BearAssist - should be fine.

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lmao

I am hopeful.

I feel like running a twitch stream with my best hacks just to rub it in SoE's face one last time. Then again i'd probably just be banned and there went my krono farming cash cow.

Bummer. ...

I'm not really concerned. Everquest has been a part of my life for 16 years now. If it were to close? I'd move on to doing real life stuff. I definitely wouldn't start another MMO. I'll keep playing until they shut it though. As to cheating/hacking... I don't think it's going to change much. I imagine the people 'running' the show aren't changing, just their profit line is going to change. That could be bad.. but it could also be very, very good for us.

I think it will be better for the game, just hope they don't slow us down!!! kissassist rules

Well wasn't everquest sold once before to soe before owned by blizzard ??

Verant and 989 Studios owned it before. New owners time to bust out no delay and warp!!! go fucking wild in this shiz.

That's right . And lol

Verant and 989 Studios were both owned/backed by Sony. Sony has Owned EQ from the beginning. They were just different subsidiaries before Sony consolidated all of its games under Sony Online Entertainment

First round of layoffs,

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=35707

Typical investment firm.

On the bright side it doesn't look like EQ1 was hit too hard, though we don't know the situation fully yet. My hope is that Daybreak will take resources away from absolute garbage (landmark/eqn) and focus on a game that actually turns a profit.

Re: SOE sold off by Sony, picked up by investment firm &amp;quot;Columbus Nova&amp;quot;

Maskoi said:

I would be more worried about how the new company is going to handle 3rd party software like MQ2 and cheating.

Click to expand...

This is a serious concern as for me as well.

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Redbot said:

First round of layoffs,

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/story.html?story=35707

Typical investment firm.

On the bright side it doesn't look like EQ1 was hit too hard, though we don't know the situation fully yet. My hope is that Daybreak will take resources away from absolute garbage (landmark/eqn) and focus on a game that actually turns a profit.

Click to expand...

OMFG ....

Was counting the minutes until the news came out .... knew this was happening... trimming the fat.

Re: SOE sold off by Sony, picked up by investment firm &amp;quot;Columbus Nova&amp;quot;

I say good riddance why defend folks who only made changed to game that pissed us off? lets get new blood in there to fix there past mistakes and let us play our way!
if 40 % of your player base boxes why would you make it harder for them to box .. ie they quit you lose two times as much as a single player who quits.

Re: SOE sold off by Sony, picked up by investment firm &quot;Columbus Nova&quot;

So far, no news of any EQ1-specific employees losing work.

https://www.reddit.com/r/everquest/...pers_affected_by_the_layoffs/?sort=confidence

I am going to be slightly controversial here:

It is sad to see people losing work, but on the other hand, if EQ can be made to run on skeleton crew (and probably some development outsourced offshore too) then so be it.

EDIT: Do we really need community managers on a full salary for EQ or EQII? I say let the fans handle Fan Faire and so on.

As long as we get our content, I would be happy as a peon.

The problem is that we are not going to get any additional resources in EQ.

If I were a Russian oligarch I would shut down the whole San Diego studio and outsource everything to Russia. Good Russian developer is about $50k/year in total costs(of which programmer may get about 35-40k), while good US programmer costs $150k+/yr to the company.

That is a good US programmer may make 90k/year (not counting silly Silicon Valley salaries) but the company has to set aside about 150k/year which includes payroll taxes, benefits, etc. In Europe it is about x2,that is a good programmer may make 50k Euros a year but costs company 100k Euros.

Of course what happens usually in outsourcing that company gets goes the cheapest route and pays $20k a year (doesn't matter India, Russia, Romania or China) of which the poor aspiring junior programmer gets less than 10k. Company gets crap results and acts surprised when shit breaks.

Well it did not take long for the layoffs. What I see happening is probably status quo on current games so long as they are profitable. New projects (ie EQ Next) will be evaluated on a case by case basis and those are the ones most likely to be in jeopardy.

I remember 10-13 years (can't remember now) when Origin sold Ultima Online to EA. UO2 got canned and well they kept UO around (and still chugging along with bare bones development). Probably what is in store for EQ.

Selling to Daybreak will probably keep EQ1 running for years upon years now but probably killed EQ Next if they don't see profitability in it.

playj said:

Of course what happens usually in outsourcing that company gets goes the cheapest route and pays $20k a year (doesn't matter India, Russia, Romania or China) of which the poor aspiring junior programmer gets less than 10k. Company gets crap results and acts surprised when shit breaks.

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Exactly.

And I don't know if you can even look at this as a traditional widget business. If games aren't art, they're something close to it. You can't offshore Jeff Butler's vision of Kunark and Velious.

A real gaming company that cares about EQ could turn this ship around in a single expansion. With the right staff in place, EQ could get back to 400k subscribers if not more.

WoW is gaining subscribers. Eve Online almost always gains:


Eve online subscribers


An aging MMO doesn't have to lose subscribers. It just needs a company that gives a fuck.

Planetside dev talks about the layoffs. It was not a secret within the company.

http://www.np.reddit.com/r/Planetside/comments/2vm5nl/dont_hate_on_columbus_novadaybreak/