PlanetSide 2 – Toadman Interactive studio takes over operation of PlanetSide 2

We remember that last February, Enad Global 7 and its subsidiary Daybreak Game announced layoffs and the sale of a “non-essential license” for $5.9 million, in order to replenish its coffers. And indiscretions suggested that PlanetSide could be the license in question. In a note published on the official website of PlanetSide 2we learn that the MMOFPS has just changed hands: the operation of the MMO will now be ensured by the Swedish studio Toadman Interactive.

As is often the case with Enad Global 7 and Daybreak Game, the operation is rather nebulous. It should be remembered that Toadman Interactive was initially the studio that created Enad Global 7 – Toadman Interactive was founded in 2013, bought different development studios, then split its development activities on the one hand (within the studios in question ), and publishing on the other hand (in the new entity Enad Global 7 created in 2020). On the Daybreak Game side, operations are not simpler: Daybreak oversees several subsidiaries, including Rogue Planet Games who was in charge of operating the PlanetSide license. The group does not specify the fate reserved for Rogue Planet Games and its employees, but PlanetSide 2 therefore returns more or less to a sister subsidiary within the group. EG7. We imagine that the parent company hopes to rationalize its operating costs in this way.

Roadmap and promise of updates

Despite the opacity of the operation, we will nevertheless remember that PlanetSide 2 is clearly not intended to disappear. And if PlanetSide 2 gave the feeling of being in “maintenance mode” for a few months now, it is precisely because the license was undergoing a transition to its new operator. Of which act.

Toadman Interactive takes the opportunity to unveil a roadmap which must first “focus on the elements that make PlanetSide 2 incredible, rebalance the mechanisms and content, while correcting what is dysfunctional”, then allow “creating more objectives player-based, linked to the core gameplay of PlanetSide 2” and finally “articulating each major update around themes and stories in order to give more structure and context to the game universe”. In other words, better exploit the potential and originalities of PlanetSide 2 while ensuring that they have more meaning for players.

More concretely, the new operator indicates that it has devoted the first quarter of this year to correcting bugs. The second will be marked by cosmetic additions and celebrations of the anniversary of the PlanetSide license, notably through animations. In the third quarter, the studio promises a new game mode and an evolution of Sunderer for the deployment and management of troops on the battlefields. Finally, the studio intends to keep a little mystery about the end-of-year updates in the fourth quarter, but promises the traditional Halloween animations as well as a new theme which “will integrate a new type of vehicles, sets of 'armors, helmets, weapons and cosmetics'.

The studio also promises that as the team becomes familiar with the specifics of PlanetSide 2, the updates will become more extensive and their pace of deployment can be accelerated. Enough to give PlanetSide 2 a second wind?