H1Z1 game publisher Daybreak Game Company has laid off an undisclosed number of staffers at its headquarters in San Diego, GamesBeat has learned.
The online game publisher helped pioneer the “battle royale” craze with a variant of its H1Z1 game. But the company has faced fierce competition from Epic Games’ Fortnite and Bluehole’s PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds, which have seen a meteoric rise in the past year.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the company said, “Daybreak confirms we are realigning our workforce to better position our company for the future. Because of this, we have had to make an extremely difficult decision to part ways with some of our employees across various disciplines at the studio. We are doing everything we can to take care of each affected individual by providing them appropriate transition assistance.”
The company said it remains “focused on publishing and developing large-scale online games and will continue to service our existing and long-standing games and franchises.”
Daybreak had a bit of a false alarm scare earlier in the week. A publication reported that the assets of Daybreak’s owner, Columbus Nova, might be frozen as part of the Trump administration’s move to freeze the assets of Russian oligarchs related to the attempts to manipulate the presidential campaign.
One of the oligarchs was Viktor Vekselberg, who owns the Renova Group conglomerate and its subsidiary, Columbus Nova. But Daybreak said that it had failed to correct erroneous information that surfaced when it was sold in 2015, and that Columbus Nova never owned it. Rather, its owner is Jason Epstein, former senior managing partner of Columbus Nova that acquired Daybreak, not Columbus Nova itself. However, that information seems a little sketchy, as the above story says.
Daybreak Games was originally Sony Online Entertainment until it spun out on its own in 2015. The company owns and operates games such as DC Universe Online, Just Survive, Payday: The Heist, and Planetside 2.