Games

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.

The largest Evo to date by unique entrants, growing by about 8% over the previous year, which makes sense since Street Fighter 6 is very young still and Tekken 8 is here for the first time. Guilty Gear Strive has hardly dropped off at all despite being 3 years old, and this will be history's largest Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike bracket. Plus, other nerdy data is here, including which players of game X also signed up for game Y, and what the most popular games by country are. Competition ought to be pretty damn good this year.

GOG link posted, Steam link is here. I tried a demo what feels like forever ago, neat little colony builder.