Daybreak corporate sleuth and TheoryForge crewmate @MSandersonD has uncovered another Daybreak gem: new corporate registrations for Daybreak-related companies. California and Delaware filings show that owners have been busy over the last year, filing a new LLC for Daybreak Games Studios under the existing Daybreak Game Company last year, in addition to another new entity, Rogue Planet Games, Inc. As Scott reminds us, Rogue Planet itself was originally trademarked back in 2019 prior to the formation of several Daybreak substudios (including Rogue Planet) that seemed marked for individual sale. But now, the PlanetSide 2 studio has gotten its own separate incorporation, which could mean it’s about to be spun out into its own company, not just a fully owned sub-studio.
Or it could mean nothing. As readers will recall, Daybreak’s filings have been wild over the last few years. Those 2019 filings for Darkpaw Games, Rogue Planet Games, and Dimensional Ink manifested as a substudio realignment at the top of 2020 – and a complete buyout of the whole company by Enad 7 Global late last year. The Cold Iron trademarks also turned out to lead directly to the acquisition of that studio. But you’ll also remember that Daybreak has trademarked studio and game names that never came to pass in the real world, including Wandering Monster, Parabolic, Golden Age Studios, and – I’m sorry for this – Car1Z1, as MMO Fallout’s Connor reminded us yesterday.
CAR1NZ1 please stop no
— breetoplay (@nbrianna) April 6, 2021
Time for some more @DaybreakGames @enadglobal7 news. It has been a little while since I did some digging. I don't think any of this has been noticed yet but I could be wrong. So thread 👇
Rogue Planet Games, Inc was created 12/22/20 in Delaware. pic.twitter.com/BGkbdddgIU
— Scott (@MSandersonD) April 7, 2021
What does this mean? It is hard to say and this just speculation but it has the appearance that Rogue Planet Games is being split off from Daybreak Games Studios. Note how it is Rogue Planet Games, INC and not LLC. Daybreak/Sony never formed incorporations, just LLCs.
— Scott (@MSandersonD) April 7, 2021
As we noted in 2020, Daybreak has been one drama bomb after another since 2015 when Sony sold SOE off and it rebranded as Daybreak. The years since have seen the cancelation of the then-much-anticipated EverQuest Next and other games, sunsets of multiple other titles, several mass-layoffs, the closure of Player Studio, the departure of president John Smedley, a (now-defunct?) partnership with NantG, an esports financial scandal, and the Columbus Nova scandal, our biggest story of the year in 2018, during which we learned Daybreak had been fibbing about who owned it and tried to scrub it from the internet. So let’s just say that it’s not all that hard to believe wild rumors about Daybreak these days.
Daybreak’s owner, EG7, has bought multiple companies over the last few months, most recently Innova. During its investor presentation, it specifically mentioned PlanetSide 2 as one of its “world-class IPs,” and as of December, PlanetSide 2 was actually touted as Daybreak’s second-biggest MMO – behind DCUO but well ahead of LOTRO and the combined EverQuest franchise – so we’re not sure a sell-off is already in the cards. Also worth noting here is that Rogue Planet Games’ boss, Andy Sites, left the company in January, not unlike the way Holly Longdale left for Blizzard just after Daybreak spun out separate studios. Either way, something’s going on.
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