Yesterday, we broke the news that Z1 Battle Royale looked to be in serious trouble based on developers stating publicly that they’d been laid off from the title. Now, we have a better picture about what’s going on thanks to NantG’s statement. Bizarrely, it’s not all bad news, and the PC version of H1Z1 isn’t completely hosed – it’s just going back to Daybreak.
“Despite the team’s determination and commitment to revive Z1BR’s player base with our recent Season 3 launch update, we soon realized that the road is still paved with many challenges that preclude us from long-term success, including the confusion it caused by having both NantG Mobile and Daybreak managing the same game under two separate brands. Based on these events and the current state of the game, NantG Mobile will focus on its core mission of developing mobile games moving forward, and we have refocused our team toward this vision. We have also decided to hand back the Z1BR torch to Daybreak Games, so that both Z1BR and H1Z1 will be under one publishing umbrella once again. Daybreak Games has agreed to keep the servers up for players and continue live maintenance on the game.”
The company does not acknowledge the layoffs outside of that one line – “refocused our team toward this vision.”
NantG says that it’ll be working with Daybreak on the transition and doesn’t anticipate downtime. Do note that the companies don’t make clear the state of the supposedly ongoing negotiations surrounding Just Survive.
