Daybreak Game Company

Sony Online Entertainment LLC

Promotion of EverQuest II and Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom at the E3 2006

In April 2006, Sony Online Entertainment, Inc. became Sony Online Entertainment LLC, owned by Sony Pictures Digital and Sony Computer Entertainment America. In May 2006, it was announced that SOE would be co-publisher of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. However, Sigil retained full development rights, and SOE's role was only that of marketing, distribution, technical support, and hosting the game servers. SOE also announced the release of Field Commander, its third game for the PlayStation Portable System. In August 2006, SOE announced the acquisition of developer Worlds Apart Productions, renaming the studio SOE-Denver. The studio has since released an online version of the WizKids pirates constructible strategy game. In November 2006, SOE released its first PlayStation 3 title Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom, within the launch window of the PlayStation 3 system. SOE also released Pirates Online Constructible Strategy Game, the online version of the WizKids Pirates Constructible Strategy Game.

In January 2007, SOE announced that it has licensed rights from Midway Home Entertainment to develop and release six classic Midway games for PlayStation 3 download, including Mortal Kombat II, Gauntlet II, Joust, Rampage World Tour, Rampart, and Championship Sprint. The games were available from the PlayStation Store. The announcement came shortly after SOE released its second PlayStation 3 digital download GripShift. On May 15, 2007, Sony Online Entertainment announced that they had completed a transaction to purchase key assets from Sigil Games Online, including Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (described as Sigil's "tentpole property").

On March 13, 2008, Sony Online Entertainment announced that Sony Computer Entertainment will have direct control over SOE.

On January 16, 2009, the company joined Steam, selling EverQuest, EverQuest II and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes via Steam. On the same day, the company purchased Pox Nora, an online turn-based strategy game. On August 1, 2009, SOE shut down The Matrix Online after 4 years of operation. Players were treated to about 2 months of gaming despite some initial setbacks that left many veteran players unable to access the game for about a week after the announcement was made. A memory book was developed and was made available for download on the game's site.

As of May 2010, John Smedley is the CEO of Sony Online Entertainment. SOE is headquartered in San Diego, California, with additional game development studios located in Austin, Texas, Denver, Colorado and Seattle, Washington. On July 15, 2010, SOE eliminated 35 full-time positions and an undisclosed number of temporary positions to "...better align the company's resources..."^[5] On August 8, 2010, SOE announced that EverQuest Next was in the early stages of development.

On January 7, 2011, SOE and Fastpoint Games announced the alpha launch of the Facebook game Fortune League. Fortune League integrates real-time performance data such as damages, deaths and healings directly from the massively multiplayer online game environment and uses them to form "Hero Stats" that drive the game. Therefore, player actions inside EverQuest II affected what happened in Fortune League, and prizes from Fortune League helped users advance in the EverQuest II environment. Fastpoint Games CEO, Kelly Perdew, positioned Fortune League as a new category of "snackable" data-driven games that would help MMO franchises acquire users and tap new revenue streams.^[6][7] On February 1, 2011, SOE unveiled new PlayStation Network games to be released throughout the year. These included Acceleration of Suguri X Edition, Akimi Village, Plants vs. Zombies, Rochard, Sideway and Slam Bolt Scrappers.^[8] On March 31, 2011, SOE confirmed that "it will eliminate 205 positions and close its Denver, Seattle, and Tucson studios." Production of The Agency was also discontinued.^[9]

On December 6, 2011, EverQuest II switched to a free-to-play model, with optional subscriptions.^[10] On December 15, 2011, Star Wars Galaxies was closed.^[11] SOE maintained a Memory Book^[12] for former players.

Data breach

On April 27, 2011, Sony, the parent company of SOE, released statements regarding an intrusion, on or about April 18, into the PlayStation Network, and the potential theft of up to 77 million subscribers' personal data. Sony maintains that PSN and SOE are hosted and run on completely separate subsystems and that the PlayStation Network intrusion had no major effect on SOE's online services.^[13][14] SOE developers posted messages of concern and apology, but also assurances the SOE servers and systems were not compromised.

On May 2, 2011, SOE interrupted their online services. Players were told "We have had to take the SOE service down temporarily. In the course of our investigation into the intrusion into our systems, we have discovered an issue that warrants enough concern for us to take the service down effective immediately. We will provide an update later today (Monday)."^[15] Later, SOE disclosed that "personal information from approximately 24.6 million SOE accounts may have been stolen", including names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, gender, date of birth, login ID, and hashed passwords.^[16][17]

Daybreak Game Company

On February 2, 2015, Sony announced that SOE had been sold to investment company Columbus Nova for an undisclosed amount and that it would be renamed Daybreak Game Company. Cutting its ties with Sony, Daybreak subsequently became able to develop their games for platforms other than PlayStation, including Xbox and mobile platforms.^[18] On February 11, employees of the company reported they were undergoing layoffs, including several senior developers and project managers. Shortly after, Daybreak responded by announcing the layoffs were intended to make the company profitable, but did not detail the extent of the layoffs or whether it would affect the development and support of their new and existing games.^[19] On July 22, 2015, Daybreak announced that John Smedley had stepped down as the company's President, and that Russell Shanks, the company's former COO, will take up his position.^[20] On August 21, 2015, Smedley left Daybreak to found a new company.^[21] In October 2016, Russell Shanks left Daybreak.^[22] Ji Ham is the current acting president.^[23]

On December 19, 2016, it was announced that Daybreak games would become the new publisher of The Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online, taking over the role from Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Although the two games would maintain their old account system and server centers, not integrating with the rest of Daybreak.^[24] The result of this deal would cause the closure of Asheron's Call and Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings on January 31, 2017.^[25]

In April 2018, Russian businessman and Columbus Nova owner Viktor Vekselberg, and his portfolio company Renova Group, were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department as part of an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. Daybreak began to deny that it had been sold to Columbus Nova at all (through public statements, deletion of press releases that had mentioned Columbus Nova), stating that the company had actually been acquired by Jason Epstein (through Inception Acquisitions, LLC), who was a partner to Columbus Nova at the time, and is also an investor in Harmonix. A Daybreak spokesperson claimed that Epstein's exact ties to Columbus Nova had caused confusion in media reporting of the sale, even though its deleted press release made the same claim.^{[26][27][28][29]}