Remember a year ago when the Enad Global 7 board ousted CEO and co-founder Robin Flodin and replaced him – temporarily and in an “acting” capacity – with Daybreak’s Ji Ham? The board even bought Flodin out of the company entirely last spring, allowing Daybreak’s Jason Epstein to become the company’s second-largest shareholder – and now, he’s been named chairman of the board. Ham remains acting CEO, according to yesterday’s press release.
Epstein, MMO gamers will recall, is a name at the heart of the Daybreak buyout from over seven years ago. In 2015, SOE announced it had been sold to Russian-backed investment firm Columbus Nova and assumed the name Daybreak Games, but in 2018, the company began claiming it had never had any affiliation with Columbus Nova and had instead been acquired entirely by former Columbus Nova executive Jason Epstein, contrary to its own press releases and statements at the time, which it then began scrubbing from the internet in a scandal that became the biggest MMORPG news story of the year. Epstein was executive chairman of the Daybreak board, orchestrating the eventual sale of Daybreak to EG7 back in 2020 and joining EG7’s board – and now he and ally Ham will run it outright.
That news comes from the Q2 2022 investor presentation from the Swedish company covering the April to June 2022 period, which has continued to see high growth. EG7 says that during Q2 it counted $311.1M in net revenues, a boost of 49% year-over-year, owing to both its service segment (subsidiary Petrol’s brand work on Warzone, Diablo Immortal, and Call of Duty Modern Warfare II via its “expanding relationship with Activision-Blizzard”) and its gaming segment (the spring successes of Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online are specifically singled out there, as is MechWarrior 5).
Daybreak (and Standing Stone Games) continues to make up the largest chunk of gaming revenue for the company – a full 75% – and support for its titles is emphasized in this report. EG7 talks up an “anticipated boost in LOTRO from Amazon’s Rings of Power release” and “upcoming annual expansion packs for [EverQuest] and [EverQuest II]” in the short-term as well as “revamps” and updates for LOTRO, DC Universe Online, and Magic Online in the medium-term. The company also teases “new products based on owned IPs and existing 3rd party IPs” and plays down the likelihood of additional mergers and acquisitions. The Marvel MMO, of course, was canceled last quarter. PlanetSide 2 and H1Z1 are not mentioned.
