Daybreak Games president John Smedley steps down
It's been a tough year for Daybreak Games president John Smedley, which may be why he has stepped down from his position earlier tonight.
There's been a major shakeup over at Daybreak Game Company. President and CEO John Smedley has stepped down from his position after years with the company formerly known as Sony Online Entertainment.
This story comes courtesy of VentureBeat. The reasons for Smedley's departure are unknown. However, this comes in the wake of the recent sentencing of one of the cyberattackers at the heart of a number of DDoS attacks across a variety of gaming services. The defendent, Julius Kivimaki, was convicted of over 50,000 cyberattacks, but received zero jail time. An outraged Smedley, who had been targeted when Lizard Squad called in a bomb threat on his American Airlines flight, went on a lengthy Twitter tirade against Kivimaki. That act may have rallied the Lizard Squad members, who renewed their attacks on Daybreak servers.
Smedley is said to be taking time off, with COO Russell Shanks said to be taking over in his stead. However, Smedley is not finished with Daybreak, as a spokesperson told VentureBeat that he would soon transition to a different position within the company. The company will likely need him, too. It has not been a great year for Daybreak, with the company already losing key members of both the Everquest Next and PlanetSide 2 teams, though the latter did just successfully launch its Playstation 4 version after years of development.
