Smedley steps down as Daybreak Games president

I still get confused whenever Daybreak Game Company are mentioned, as in my head they’re still Sony Online Entertainment, SOE, and stuck firmly in a pre-WoW past.

Russell Shanks, the current chief operating officer, will move into the role of President. Smedley will be taking a break before returning to a new position at the company. “Upon finalisation of his plans, further communication will be provided”. After the company became independent from Sony, it was the victim of attacks by hacking group Lizard Squad. This put Daybreak in the firing line, and on July 9 Lizard Squad launched a DDoS attack on Daybreak’s servers.

John Smedley, president of Daybreak Game Company, is retiring from his leadership role. He was one of the key developers on seminal MMORPG EverQuest, and has been a major force behind Planetside 2, H1Z1 and EverQuest Next. Despite being convicted for 50,000 counts of computer-related crimes in Finland, Kivimaki was only sentenced to a two-year commuted sentence, prompting Smedley to state on Twitter that he was “coming for” him, threatening to sue Kivimaki.

Smedley is well known for his outspokenness and willingness to engage with players personally via social media rather than keeping behind PR barriers, but he has not yet commented on this latest development.