EG7 Q3 2023: Daybreak’s MMO revenues dip ahead of Q4 expansion deluge

Daybreak parent company Enad Global 7 has released its Q3 2023 financial report this week, and it’s good for the company, if weaker for some of the MMORPGs we watch most closely. On the whole, the company saw a 16.7% bump in revenue for the quarter compared to the same quarter last year, owing to multiple games, chief among them My Singing Monsters.

Daybreak, however, has seen a slight dip in revenues this quarter, when generally it carries half or more of the company’s revenues all by itself. “Daybreak’s softer result for the period and year of approximately 15 percent is due to [the fact that] that both DC Universe Online (DCUO) and The Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) have come down further from the pandemic levels,” the company admits.

Of course, that’s not entirely unexpected, as Lord of the Rings Online just launched its 2023 expansion last week, to be counted next quarter. Likewise, EverQuest and EverQuest II will both deliver their annual expansions before the new year. EG7 doesn’t seem particularly concerned, saying, “We expect stabilizing and reversing trends as DCUO becomes available on the latest generation of consoles, and we see the projected tractions from LOTRO’s latest expansion.” Indeed, another slide specifically calls out the LOTRO expansion launch so far (as well as EverQuest and Magic Online) with “solid performance.”

As we noted last round, Daybreak is also on deck to publish Cold Iron’s next game, though we still don’t know exactly what it is beyond a major IP shooter.

“As announced in September, Daybreak secured the exclusive, worldwide publishing rights for Cold Iron Studio’s new multiplayer action shooter based on a major global IP slated for release in 2025. This deal represents the first step in the group’s updated growth strategy focused on the middle market game publishing segment.”

Acting (yes, still Acting) CEO Ji Ham also reiterates that following its long-term strategy presentation back in September – the one where he teased EverQuest 3 – EG7 is shifting its focus to long-term growth with “SEK 500 million of investment over 2023 and 2024 for the middle-market publishing business,” specifically with games “based on known franchises with an existing passionate and core audience.”