Late yesterday saw the surprise announcement that Daybreak Games had been acquired by a Swedish company called EG7. I first got the news in an email from Wilhelm and I refer anyone who hasn't already seen it to his detailed post on the subject.
I don't have time to go into it in the detail I'd like so I'm going to cut and paste my comment from Wilhelm's post and leave it here so I can refer to it in the doubltlessly numerous posts on the topic that will come in the weeks and months (and maybe even years) to follow.
It's bad timing for me. Lockdown ends today and I have three days of work (I know – outrageous – first time I’ve done three days in a row since February, I think) so I don’t have time to dig into this as I’d like. My immediate reaction is that it’s probably good news for the players. Daybreak looks to be significantly bigger than just about anything else EG7 owns – maybe bigger than allof them put together. In the short term, at least, that should assure continuity. Looking at EG7’s website, it seems they’re hoping to make a name for themselves in the global gaming market so it looks as though they’ve bought the Daybreak portfolio to run as games rather than for some ancillary purpose, which is more than we could ever say about Columbus Nova et al.
Then there’s the transparency issue. As you mention, we’re already seeing more information than we’ve seen in the entire tenure of DBG. I’m hopeful that a combination of Swedish and EU law and commercial practice will make that the norm from now on.
The Standing Stone issue is perhaps the most intriguing. I’m not sure anything in the press release does cover that. It mentions the games and the I.P.s several times, including the fact that they’re both licensed, but does it ever mention SSG by name? A big part of what EG7 has done in the past relates to publicity and publishing so maybe they’ll just pick up whatever DBG was doing to “publish” SSG’s games, with SSG remaining “independent” as before. I guess we’ll find out in dur course. I would at least expect to get more clarification on that than we ever got from Daybreak.
As for the email database, yeah, I think as many as ten of those may be me and Mrs. Bhagpuss so I’d take the 178m with a pinch of salt.
And that's probably it for me til the weekend. Not going to have a lot of time to post before then.
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My two older kids play LOTRO a lot, and they mentioned that Standing Stone Games had been acquired.
ReplyDelete"By Gamigo?" I asked.
"No, some other company."
And that's all I know.
We seem to be certain now that DBG did own SSG, something they never openly acknowledged. We also know that all the games are doing pretty well, which is good, although since my own particular favorite is EQII and that's doing least well of all of them, it doesn't do to be complacent.
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