Last year, the battle royale title H1Z1 got rebranded to simply Z1 Battle Royale. The series itself has had a slightly convoluted back story and this most recent development for the franchise has continued that tradition. The game has gone through a couple re-brandings with sections of it being ended altogether.
Some time ago the title had been relaunched and found a new developer to take the reigns from Daybreak. After the arrival of the game’s 3rd season, developer NantG Mobile made promises to bring the game back to its glory days by restoring old features such as animations and mechanics.
Their goal was to bring the game back to they way it was during the time of its peak popularity. However, it seems as these plans for NantG and Z1 didn’t quite work out as they have officially announced on Steam that they will be giving up on the rebranded title and will be handing development back to Daybreak Games. There are rumors that the changed has caused layoffs within the company but nothing has been confirmed.
NantG wrote on Steam “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.”
NantG also promised they are working Daybreak Games to ensure a smooth transition and that Daybreak will indeed keep the servers for Z1 open while also continuing development for the game.
In regards to what NantG will do now, they stated that they “will focus on its core mission of developing mobile games moving forward, and we have refocused our team toward this vision.”