Developer NantG has announced that it is giving up the newly renamed Z1 Battle Royale and returning it back to the original developers Daybreak Games. The game was a H1Z1 spinoff that was being developed by NantG mobile. The new developer has now abandoned its attempt to “revert the game back to its glory days.”
The announcement was made by NantG over at the Steam Community page, where it admitted that the developer was working feverishly on rebranding the Z1 Battle Royale and reverting the game back to when it was most popular.
We have decided to hand back the Z1BR torch to Daybreak Games, so that both Z1BR and H1Z1 will be under one publishing umbrella once again. Daybreak Games has agreed to keep the servers up for players and continue live maintenance on the game.
Despite the team’s determination and commitment to revive Z1BR’s player base with our recent Season 3 launch update, we soon realized that the road is still paved with many challenges that preclude us from long-term success, including the confusion it caused by having both NantG Mobile and Daybreak managing the same game under two separate brands.
Based on these events and the current state of the game, NantG Mobile will focus on its core mission of developing mobile games moving forward, and we have refocused our team toward this vision.
NantG also added that during this period of transition they do not foresee any issues of this affecting the players experience with Z1BR, as they are working with Daybreak on ensuring that the transition process runs as smoothly as possible without any disruption to the game’s service.
The title being juggled this has set its future in uncertainty. Many fans were questioning if the previous iteration H1Z1: Just Survive would return. The game was discontinued because of low player count. Though it seems unlikely if it would Just Survive would be making a comeback.
H1Z1 was originally released on Steam Early Access in 2015 and then split into the multiplayer survival named H1Z1: Just Survive and a battle royale H1Z1: King of the Kill in 2016. The following year, Just Survive was cut from the H1Z1 and ultimately closed in 2018. King of the Kill became simply H1Z1 and was rebranded to Z1 Battle Royale earlier this year.
What do you think of NantG dropping the Z1BR title, and giving back to Daybreak Games? Post your comments below.
