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News - Columbus Nova assets frozen, Daybreak distances itself. (1 Viewer)

I bet we see a large influx of sellers trying to dump items and accounts for low prices while they can.
 
I bet we see a large influx of sellers trying to dump items and accounts for low prices while they can.

wtt krono for wow gold. pst.

actually, if dbg does some epic sale in the next week or two, then i will put on my little chicken little outfit and enjoy playing my guys one last time. that's a sobering thought.
 
Well if that happens... What is the last thing everyone would do with their toons?

I'd probably load up my druid and go pull all of VoL one more time.
 
So, there are reports all over, with cached links to their pages, of DBG deleting all references on their wiki page and associated DBG pages to Columbus Nova..

Wow.. I mean, usually my thought is, if you're innocent, you have nothing to hide..

So.. what game should I move on to next? Seeing as this is looking like a big shit sandwich for DBG the more I read about this, and their actions taking place right now..
 
this is crazy...russian sanctions bringing down EQ...who the fuck would have guessed

commets from that article that make this seem bad:
Henrik Boriths
Another IP was editing before ?Daybreakpr? on the wikipedia page(s), listed as an IP.

Whois lookup:

network:Org-Name:Renova US Management Group, LLC
network:Street-Address:900 Third Ave 19th floor
network:City:New York
network:State:NY
network:Country:US

You know, Renova Group?. the parent company of Columbus Nova.

4 26 minutes ago
Nick
READER
Nick
How nice of Renova to make it clear that Daybreak is not associated with their subsidiary Columbus Nova when Renova has about a billion dollars worth of assets being frozen??.
 
maybe that sudden downtime this past weekend was some change with their servers to get around this?

hopefully there is some document that shows Epstien purchasing Daybreak.

and isn't this type of server hosting nearly impossible to bring down? they could technically keep moving the servers to different countries, or something like that?
 
maybe that sudden downtime this past weekend was some change with their servers to get around this?

hopefully there is some document that shows Epstien purchasing Daybreak.

and isn't this type of server hosting nearly impossible to bring down? they could technically keep moving the servers to different countries, or something like that?

Assuming they can make payroll to pay the employees to make those changes.
 
I don't think it would go down permenetly. The assests are only being frozen, that is temporary until the investigation is done, I think. And they are putting so much effort into saying Epstein owns it because it is actually worth something, giving the opportunity for something to buy it to help ColNova liqudate assets?
 
...if you're innocent, you have nothing to hide..

in today's hyper politically charged, over reacting, super sensitive, witch hunt, kill first then actually try to understand what was going on ..........
or more correctly kill first then get the public opinion convinced and when truth and facts come out that contradict a belief, cry "Victim!" and bully the people that would dare question an erroneous popular opinion.
to survive you gotta unleash the spin doctors Public opinion and belief is as powerful if not more powerful to our society than facts.


Play "DEFENSE" better
 
in today's hyper politically charged, over reacting, super sensitive, witch hunt, kill first then actually try to understand what was going on ..........
or more correctly kill first then get the public opinion convinced and when truth and facts come out that contradict a belief, cry "Victim!" and bully the people that would dare question an erroneous popular opinion.
to survive you gotta unleash the spin doctors Public opinion and belief is as powerful if not more powerful to our society than facts.


Play "DEFENSE" better

giphy.gif
 
This doesn't look good, but in the end it's all speculation and premature. MOP's article says CN's assets are being frozen, but who can actually confirm that. The sanctions (and company listed by the Dept of Treasury) is Renova Group. Are they just assuming CN's assets are being frozen too or did they somehow confirm that?

How far reaching are the sanctions? Does it apply to every single subsidiary owned by Renova and all of their subsidiaries? All are assuming yes, but I don't think you could say that with certainty. Is DBG owned 100% directly by CN or do they only on 51%? Just because they "bought" SoE does not mean they are the 100% owner, or even 51+, they could just be the majority owner with the biggest name. Or like most entities do they have a complex ownership structure with multiple upper tier entities and CN just is an investment. If that's the case, would the other partner be able to buy out their share as the Treasury Dept tells them they have till June to wind down their investments of which the government will hold the proceeds.

I would be interested to hear eqmule and his thoughts. He is arguably more invested in this game than any of us and also has close ties to the developers at EQ. I would assume at some point he would reach out, though they may not tell him anything.
 
This part of the article is fucking scary at the same time ROFL, only Daybreak would do some sleezy shit like this:
Also, is that even legal what they are doing now? We know they were bought by CN for a fact, they even had a CN division leader put out a press statement back in 2015.

Update #2
Daybreak tells us that its original press statements about Columbus Nova acquiring Daybreak were an error on the part of the company and that it is correcting that error now.
"It was current executive chairman Jason Epstein, former senior managing partner of Columbus Nova that acquired Daybreak, not Columbus Nova itself. That distinction was never corrected in the past, so we are correcting that now," a Daybreak spokesperson told us.
MOP commenters have pointed out that a Wikipedia account called Daybreakpr was blocked earlier this month - right around the time the sanctions were announced - for editing the Daybreak wikipedia entry to reiterate the claim that Epstein, not CN, has always owned the company. -Bree
Update #3
Daybreak has now apparently deleted the 2015 press release from its servers, as the link we quoted from earlier today is now returning a 404 error. It remains quoted in full above. And as @DkTanic tweeted to us (and ventyred posted in the comments), the Daybreak privacy policy from 2015 also refers to CN as its parent company, which is how we referred to CN in this piece's original title and slug and which Daybreak told us by email was inaccurate:
 
I would be interested to hear eqmule and his thoughts. He is arguably more invested in this game than any of us and also has close ties to the developers at EQ. I would assume at some point he would reach out, though they may not tell him anything.

One thing about this too, is Daybreak also tells Eqmule a lot in confidence and he can't always say all he knows here. Daybreak is deleting ANY thread that even comes up about this on their own forums so I doubt they'd tell EQmule what's going on then let him go and blab about it elsewhere.


Other than that, here's a news article that links Columbus Nova, Renova Group and Viktor Vekselberg altogether: https://www.motherjones.com/politic...ussian-oligarchs-if-they-gave-money-to-trump/

There is more online if you search for Viktor Vekselberg... Nothing really comes up when you search Columbus Nova. So, I want to say you're right we can't totally trust everything they say in the MOP article but it definitely looks like they're on to something... Whether or not we have to worry about that something.....
 
This part of the article is fucking scary at the same time ROFL, only Daybreak would do some sleezy shit like this:
Also, is that even legal what they are doing now? We know they were bought by CN for a fact, they even had a CN division leader put out a press statement back in 2015.

There is nothing illegal with them distancing themselves from an owner. It happens all the time. I'm not sure that it is sleazy either. They are trying to preserve the company. Also all of the relevant documents are filed away by so many parties it's not like they can actually go back and adjust the purchase and sale docs to try and change the ownership somehow. It just doesn't work like that. All of those entities that actually have ownership have filed taxes so it's not like there can be zero record of it. What daybreak is doing is distancing themselves, either in the event that the sanctions don't apply to them and don't want the bad press, or that they are hoping the company will be able to be sold out from CN (again with the Dept of Treasury holding the proceeds in frozen accounts) and trying to avoid some of the negative PR so a buyer would be more likely to buy.

Again, as much hate as Daybreak gets, they aren't idiots. They aren't actually doing what they are doing to try and pull a fast one on the US Government thinking no one will know. There are obvious reasons for it, and two of those I just mentioned.

- - - Updated - - -

One thing about this too, is Daybreak also tells Eqmule a lot in confidence and he can't always say all he knows here. Daybreak is deleting ANY thread that even comes up about this on their own forums so I doubt they'd tell EQmule what's going on then let him go and blab about it elsewhere.


Other than that, here's a news article that links Columbus Nova, Renova Group and Viktor Vekselberg altogether: https://www.motherjones.com/politic...ussian-oligarchs-if-they-gave-money-to-trump/

There is more online if you search for Viktor Vekselberg... Nothing really comes up when you search Columbus Nova. So, I want to say you're right we can't totally trust everything they say in the MOP article but it definitely looks like they're on to something... Whether or not we have to worry about that something.....

I doubt he would learn much if anything, and wasn't implying he would come here and tell us verbatim what he was told. More along the lines of "everything will probably be okay" or "yup, we're fucked"
 
I'm not sure that it is sleazy either.
Again, as much hate as Daybreak gets, they aren't idiots.

You say they're not sleazy and also not idiots but that makes it sound like they're doing the right thing/morally good thing. I've liked Daybreak up until now, but this is a total shit show to be honest and I don't know how you can see it otherwise.

Let's give Daybreak the benefit of the doubt and assume most of what they told MOP was true. IE, the part where Jason Epstein owns the company and left Columbus Nova years ago aka theyre not affiliated with them anymore. We already know they're lying about Columbus Nova NEVER owning Daybreak - that's total bullshit. There's too much of a paper trail proving otherwise (and if the paper trail was WRONG as Daybreak implied in the "email" with MOP that would mean they're grossely incompetent for not correcting an error like that).

That's pretty sleazy if you ask me, lying about never being owned by Columbus Nova. That said though, maybe they couldnt tell the reporter the truth cause it's the press - they shouldn't have spoken to a reporter/the press at all and they should have waited to make an official announcement (best course of action). Instead what they're trying to do is bury all trace of this ever happening. Out of all the possible ways of handling this situation they picked one of the worst ones as far as public relations go.


They might not be stupid with their actions, but they're definitely being what I would describe as morally and ethically irresponsible.




Or maybe MOP is lying through their teeth about having ever talked to Daybreak at all, that's a possibly scenario too. That's giving Daybreak the most benefit of the doubt imo out of everything. The Email exchange with MOP is mostly all we're talking about and we have no idea if that's even real or not. After all their proof is just copy and pasted email exchanges with no actual proof it was sent by a Daybreak employee.
 
You say they're not sleazy and also not idiots but that makes it sound like they're doing the right thing/morally good thing. I've liked Daybreak up until now, but this is a total shit show to be honest and I don't know how you can see it otherwise.

Let's give Daybreak the benefit of the doubt and assume most of what they told MOP was true. IE, the part where Jason Epstein owns the company and left Columbus Nova years ago aka theyre not affiliated with them anymore. We already know they're lying about Columbus Nova NEVER owning Daybreak - that's total bullshit. There's too much of a paper trail proving otherwise (and if the paper trail was WRONG as Daybreak implied in the "email" with MOP that would mean they're grossely incompetent for not correcting an error like that).

That's pretty sleazy if you ask me, lying about never being owned by Columbus Nova. That said though, maybe they couldnt tell the reporter the truth cause it's the press - they shouldn't have spoken to a reporter/the press at all and they should have waited to make an official announcement (best course of action). Instead what they're trying to do is bury all trace of this ever happening. Out of all the possible ways of handling this situation they picked one of the worst ones as far as public relations go.


They might not be stupid with their actions, but they're definitely being what I would describe as morally and ethically irresponsible.




Or maybe MOP is lying through their teeth about having ever talked to Daybreak at all, that's a possibly scenario too. After all their proof is just copy and pasted email exchanges with no actual proof it was sent by a Daybreak employee.

You're right. I took the brighter side of the coin. Let's say your brothers-in-laws' sisters' mother was a sleaze ball and some bad PR came out about them and somehow got linked to you. Would you own up and say yes I am definitely related to her, or try to distance yourself. That is the point I was trying to make. Distancing themselves for the reasons I mentioned doesn't seem sleazy. It's an opinion, so no one has to agree. They could be playing up the fact that Jason Epstien was the General Partner with a 0.01 % ownership (but was still the GP and retained control) while CN owned 99.99% as a limited partner. But again, my point stands. Without knowing the structure of the deal and seeing the actual documents, you can't say that it was owned directly by Columbus Nova and not by Jason Epstien. He could have created a LLC that he was 100% the owner of, and said LLC got the money from CN and in turn bought SOE and rebranded DBG. If that were the case, technically they would be correct CN never owned DBG. They owned a large piece of a company that owned DBG and used the CN name in press releases to give it some credibility. I do corporate structuring and taxes so was just trying to provide some more information.

The point I did not make, which could be the sleazy part, is they are pushing this all under the rug and hope the majority of EQ subscribers don't see it, and continue to spend money on their game until the final day when EQ just turns off. I'm sure there are other ways people could think it was sleazy as well.

As for morally and ethically irresponsible I would think it's a grey area. Again, our opinions differ somewhat but are the statements coming from some CN rep responding as a representative of DBG trying to hide assets? If so, I completely agree with what you said. But what if it was a manager at DBG doing what they think is right trying to distance themselves from a far removed parent company in the hopes it won't affect their business, employees, and own job? If so, to me that blurs the lines.

Back to structuring for a sec, there are usually clauses about illegal acts where business partners can be removed. Would US sanctions fall under that and apply and allow CN to be booted from the deal? We just don't know how it'll all shake out.

All of this is with the assumption that DBG is trying to survive as a company from this debacle. As I would like to continue to play EQ I'm trying to be positive and look at it that way, naive as it may be. If this is just CN making the script and controlling everything to avoid sanctions or any other penalties upon them then I would agree with most everyone elses responses.
 
I think there is a possibility DBG is being somewhat truthful. Remember what we are dealing with, a Russian comglomerate(renova group) being the parent company of a private equity firm(columbus nova) which at some point held the majority ownership(51%? or just the biggest piece of the pie? who knows) of DBG. This seems by nature a shady business deal lol

I wouldn't be surprised that at the time of the inital deal all they(renova,CN, maybe even Epstein) told DBG was that "Columbus Nova" "owns" you now - they don't want to get into the dirty details of how their private equity firms ownership is broken up and who in that firm really wanted/owns DBG. At some point in time, behind the scences at CN, ownership could have changed from majority of CN to a majority of just Epstein - and it never really mattered publicly, because publiclyits probably better to say CN owns it instead of just some guy, and Epstein having a close enough relationship with CN, again, does that dirty detail really matter?

DBG apparently has a break even cash flow so does it really matter who technically owns DBG when DBG can technically stand on its own? It never really mattered up until now, and now they have to play PR catch up which is gonna be bad no matter which way you play it.
 
I think there is a possibility DBG is being somewhat truthful. Remember what we are dealing with, a Russian comglomerate(renova group) being the parent company of a private equity firm(columbus nova) which at some point held the majority ownership(51%? or just the biggest piece of the pie? who knows) of DBG. This seems by nature a shady business deal lol

I wouldn't be surprised that at the time of the inital deal all they(renova,CN, maybe even Epstein) told DBG was that "Columbus Nova" "owns" you now - they don't want to get into the dirty details of how their private equity firms ownership is broken up and who in that firm really wanted/owns DBG. At some point in time, behind the scences at CN, ownership could have changed from majority of CN to a majority of just Epstein - and it never really mattered publicly, because publiclyits probably better to say CN owns it instead of just some guy, and Epstein having a close enough relationship with CN, again, does that dirty detail really matter?

DBG apparently has a break even cash flow so does it really matter who technically owns DBG when DBG can technically stand on its own? It never really mattered up until now, and now they have to play PR catch up which is gonna be bad no matter which way you play it.

Where does your assertion that DBG only breaks even come from? If that were the case, the frozen assets wouldn't really matter because they weren't generating income anyway. The only exception would be if CN or whoever owns DBG was trying to sell the assets.
 

The only issue I have (to the extent that I care which certainly isn't life altering) with the information gained thus far is that it's obvious to anyone with a brain DBG either lied many times in the past or is lying now (my money is on now). They can attempt to sugarcoat all they want but this much is obvious.

The sugarcoating they're attempting though is doing nothing but insulting the intelligence of their customers, which DBG already has a track record of at this point.


It would be way more useful in my view to be straight up with customers about this situation unless there are perceived negative legal ramifications for doing so, in which case, the writing is on the wall.
 
My "theory" of DBG being somewhat truthful (or maybe im just buying into their spin) is kinda based on this doc which was posted to a reddit thread ( https://www.reddit.com/r/everquest/comments/8en9r7/daybreak_censoring_threads_regarding_columbus/ ):

https://i.imgur.com/1uibw0i.png


i have no clue what that doc is, but at least there is some sort of paper trail showing only Epstein as the the "manager", and the only mention of CN is the address, which is okay with me, for him to use his "business" address.
 
Why minimize the address detail? There was an image showing that same address being shown as the main address for CN on their very own website. That hardly seems like a minor point...
 
Because you dont want to put your personal address on that type of public document. And Epstein did work a lot with CN at that time, probably spending a big majority of his work hours at that office, so I think that technically could be his "business" address for his other business dealings.
 
To be fair, I'm reserving some judgement because since DBG has taken over, it's been my opinion that nearly every single public relations engagement that I've seen out of them has been the most cringe worthy, nonsensical, lack of shit giving engagement that I could almost imagine.

They are very bad at this. So that makes the truth even murkier. I'm sure the developers are capable (don't know) but I don't think the people running things there have a clue as to what they're doing.

At the very least some of it is so bad that it's quite entertaining to me, I'll give them that. I'm going to miss the cringey facepalm live streams if they do go down.
 
A good question is who does that General Counsel(David Youseffi) on that doc represent? Whats his association to DBG/CN/Epstien?
 
Because you dont want to put your personal address on that type of public document. And Epstein did work a lot with CN at that time, probably spending a big majority of his work hours at that office, so I think that technically could be his "business" address for his other business dealings.

Yes, that would all be fine if at the same time DBG hadn't also gone around listing their business structure/relationship with CN in various locations :bang:
 
I think DBG is shit at PR is because to me they are a game developer/producer company, they dont know PR. PR should be left up to who ever owns DBG because they should have the most vested interested in DBG's PR. But because DBG is owned by some shady majority, DBG is left to deal with their own PR, and... its shit lol

PR was a little better under Sony because Sony is a bigger corp that has better understanding of and more resources for PR

Yes, that would all be fine if at the same time DBG hadn't also gone around listing their business structure/relationship with CN in various locations :bang:

im throwing that under a "dirty detail" that DBG has plausible deniability of being oblivious too - just using the generic CN name and address because thats all DBG "truly" knew
 
You don't get to abdicate responsibility for marketing and branding because you're a smaller subsidiary. There are PLENTY of smart, capable people in PR to work at all these companies.

Or, you hire PR people who can do it.
 
You don't get to abdicate responsibility for marketing and branding because you're a smaller subsidiary. There are PLENTY of smart, capable people in PR to work at all these companies.

Or, you hire PR people who can do it.

true, but there is no law saying you need good PR, it is just commonly thought as good business sense. but then again, with a game nick named EverCrack, does PR really matter? lol
 
You don't get to abdicate responsibility for marketing and branding because you're a smaller subsidiary. There are PLENTY of smart, capable people in PR to work at all these companies.

Or, you hire PR people who can do it.

You mean like their PR exec who quit today? lol

http://massivelyop.com/2018/04/25/d...g-officer-laura-naviaux-has-left-the-company/

Chief Publishing officer of DBG ,Laura Naviaux , left today... Now.. is it associated with the stuff going on or what.. who knows.. maybe she got fired.. I'm sure IF CN truly didnt own DBG as they are saying, then thats a pretty big PR screw up to not have dealt with it this long and then suddenly have to in a panic.. I'm sure someone would be made to pay.. speculation of course..
 
You mean like their PR exec who quit today? lol

http://massivelyop.com/2018/04/25/d...g-officer-laura-naviaux-has-left-the-company/

Chief Publishing officer of DBG ,Laura Naviaux , left today... Now.. is it associated with the stuff going on or what.. who knows.. maybe she got fired.. I'm sure IF CN truly didnt own DBG as they are saying, then thats a pretty big PR screw up to not have dealt with it this long and then suddenly have to in a panic.. I'm sure someone would be made to pay.. speculation of course..



Its a fact that CN owned it, its a fact that Daybreak is lying that CN didn't own it. I don't know why you guys keep argueing over that because there was a PR statement by Columbus Nova back in 2015, by the guy who handles the division of CN that does ventures on online games published it. I remember looking up his Linked In profile at that time and he was head of that division.


You gotta be pretty gullible to believe CN didn't own Daybreak at some point or still does.
 
Its a fact that CN owned it, its a fact that Daybreak is lying that CN didn't own it. I don't know why you guys keep argueing over that because there was a PR statement by Columbus Nova back in 2015, by the guy who handles the division of CN that does ventures on online games published it. I remember looking up his Linked In profile at that time and he was head of that division.


You gotta be pretty gullible to believe CN didn't own Daybreak at some point or still does.

oh I'm not arguing with any of it.. I'm sort of sitting back "enjoying" the (shit)show..

I have no doubts that my EQ addiction will end at some point.. and then comes the hangover lol

This just seems to be like a reality show ending, as opposed to the slow painful death we probably all imagined..
 
News - Columbus Nova assets frozen, Daybreak distances itself.

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