File this one under “did not see this coming in a million years but also not sad about it whatsoever”: Daybreak has acquired Palia studio Singularity 6.
“Our team is absolutely thrilled to be joining forces with Daybreak Game Company, a subsidiary of Enad Global 7 AB (EG7), known for publishing and supporting some of the world’s most popular and successful online multiplayer franchises, such as EverQuest, H1Z1, The Lord of the Rings Online, and more,” S6 announced this evening. “The acquisition provides us with some incredible resources and support to continue developing Palia and elevate the product to meet the gold standard that our players expect, including engaging new content, impactful social features, and quality-of-life improvements across the board.”
Singularity 6 says that it will “continue operating independently” under its co-founders and that its “vision and creative direction will remain intact,” which would generally be one of those lines in a press release like this that causes eyerolls, but it might actually be believable in this case, given how Daybreak has handled Standing Stone Games for the last many years now.
Daybreak, of course, was founded back in 2015 using the bones of SOE, but it was itself acquired by EG7, and since then, it’s basically taken over EG7 from the inside out. It’s actually performed fairly well for EG7 over the last few years, though it dipped at the end of 2023, sold off the PlanetSide IP, and relinquished development of PlanetSide 2. Buying an existing studio and game actually aligns rather nicely with EG7’s stated goals of running consistent mid-tier MMORPG moneymakers.
S6 has been struggling for the last many months as it appeared to be suffering serious financial difficulties and went through multiple rounds of layoffs as well as its Palia beta obfuscation fiasco, so it’s hard to see this as anything but good news for folks who wanted to see Palia stick around to actually see its real launch and/or see Daybreak expand and maybe even return to its glory days of bailing out floundering MMOs.
I didn’t know that Daybreak had a history of messing up games! Huh, I’m a bit concerned now. However, Daybreak could turn their bad track record around. It remains to be seen though.
As to their business model, yeah, Singularity 6 could never have survived on overpriced cosmetics that used fake currency to induce more spending. That was a dark pattern choice which gave me pause, I couldn’t justify buying a cosmetic item.
I picked up a few outfits last month because I wanted to support them, but now I’m gun-shy. I’m not entirely thrilled at this prospect. If they add combat or start adding any stereotypical MMO crap (gachapon, pay2win, etc), I’m definitely out; I’ll go play Disney Dreamlight Valley instead.
Of course, Disney Dreamlight still has a premium currency, but at least it isn’t as bad as gachapon, pay2win. Apparently, meeting weekly goals on the free Starpath and finding chests will net the player some Moonstone. Starpath is basically like a ‘battlepass’ except since this game has no combat, it’s more like a ‘living your life’ pass, free and premium in nature. I might pass on Disney Dreamlight Valley because encouraging corpos to utilize these curses in the gaming world feels…counterproductive to me.