H1Z1 and PlanetSide 2 developers Daybreak Game Company went through another round of layoffs yesterday, though the number of employees affected is unknown. This is the third wave since the beginning of 2018.
H1Z1
8 months ago
2 years ago
Daybreak Game Company have announced that Just Survive, the game that was originally H1Z1's survival sandbox, will be shut down soon. They've already delisted the game from Steam, so no one new can buy it, but current owners can play until the servers close in October. H1Z1 will continue in its current battle royale form (previously called H1Z1: King of the Kill), after the two…
We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there. 2018 releases Jurassic World…
H1Z1 continues to grow into its own as a bizarre group gaming experiment. The title, which split into two different games in 2016, has continue to split into even more sub-games this year. The current Battle Royale game mode has bolstered by Auto Royale, which allows single, duo, or quad teams to go Full Mario Kart on each other in a quickly diminishing map. And…
H1Z1, the battle royale 'em up that Brendan "Playerunknown" Greene worked on before making his own Battlegrounds, is now going free-to-play. Developers Daybreak Game Company have announced that H1Z1 will switch to free-to-play at 10am PST (6pm UK time) today, which is a surprise coming only eight days after the game left early access. It seems a sensible move, given dwindling playercounts in the face…
H1Z1 has rolled out a major new update today, officially bringing the survive-y Battle Royale out of early access. Along with it, developers Daybreak have added a surprising new variant playmode, called Auto Royale. Auto Royale is a blend of regular Battle Royale systems and perennial PlayStation favorite Twisted Metal.
3 years ago
This month's Humble Monthly is offering an early unlock of H1Z1 to those who subscribe. That'll cost you $12 / £10 at the moment if you fancy it. H1Z1 is currently available from Steam for £14.99 / $19.99, so even if it's the only game you want out of this Humble batch, you're in a good place.
H1Z1: King of the Kill [official site] appears week-in, week-out in both our Steam Charts and in the list of the most played games on Steam, but it's come under increased competition and criticism for its bugs and problems since the release of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. Some changes addressing a few of those problems were added to the game's test server last week, and now a…
4 years ago
Survival isn't enough for the youth of today, oh no, they must make sure everyone no one else survives. Battle Royale 'em ups have spun off from open-world survival games, bringing a faster, learner experience of rummaging in bins until you get a nice rod to stab a stranger in the neck. Heck, half of 'em are directly cut out from open-world survive games -…
Multiplayer open-world zombie sandbox crafting building survival etc. H1Z1 [official site] is splitting in half, like a zombie who got stuck in a door and its torso is crawling onwards ever hopeful while its legs wonder what they're going to do with all these t-shirts. Look, it's first thing on Monday morning, okay, so you're not getting That Sparkling Alice O'Connor Wit yet. But from…
5 years ago
H1Z1 [official site] is to hold its first official tournament on September 26th at TwitchCon, the streaming service's new event highlighting their community and broadcasters. It will use the Battle Royale mode, where groups of players are dropped into a world and then must duke it out until only one or a small group remains, like The Hunger Games with zombies. Or like Battle Royale…
"That's nice, dear," is my usual response to boasts of big business numbers. They rarely reveal much interesting unless you're really into the nitty-gritty of #business (in which case, fair play to you). Why do I raise an eyebrow at news that H1Z1 [official site] has sold over one million copies?Well, while many (me included, probably) have muttered that the Early Access open-world zombie multiplayer…
A name change to the awkward-sounding'Daybreak Game Company' isn't the only consequence Sony's recent shock sale of its MMOy division SOE to management firm Columbus Nova. Barely more than a week after the acquisition, Daybreak is making lay-offs, reportedly including the long-time lead and public face of the Everquest games. "The operation of current games" won't be affected apparently, so while this is sad news…
Let's get all this out the way first: yes, this post is about paying to access a beta of a DayZ 'em up that will be free-to-play when it properly launches. This may not appeal to you; that's fine. For the curious, let's continue. Sony Online Entertainment yesterday launched their open-world zombie apocalypse survival multiplayer game H1Z1. SOE are bigger and have more resources than…
6 years ago
We expect E3 trailers to be showy, bombastic, and entirely unlike the actual game they're advertising--that's how it works. So I have no idea what Sony Online Entertainment think they're playing at with their H1Z1 E3 trailer. It's clearly little more than lightly-edited snippets of gameplay from an early development build of their free-to-play open-world zombie 'em up, janky animations and all, with some text…
A quick primer for those who've been living under a rock: 1) SOE's making a spiritual successor to Star Wars Galaxies that is also a zombie game, 2) yeah I know, and 3) zombies have transcended mere fad-dom and become immortal cultural icons for reasons I'll never be able to fully comprehend. H1Z1's impressively ambitious within a very narrow lineage, though. Think DayZ or Rust,…
So maybe you weren't expecting SOE's vaunted Star Wars Galaxies spiritual successor to be an overtly DayZ-inspired zombie MMO called H1Z1. And maybe you're not exactly shaking the sand out of your old Tatooine-scouring boots in excitement. That's fair. But as far as these things go, SOE does seem to be kind of on the right track. CEO John Smedley isn't shamefully shambling (shamebling) away…
If it wasn't already plainly obvious, survival games are all the rage these day(z), and zombies - thanks to DayZ's ever-looming influence - come part and parcel with that. The War Z/Infestation: Survivor Stories hit a little too close to home on that front, and Nether, with its possibly dubious ties to the former, also deals in apocalyptic baddie bashing, but with a slant toward the…