Storybricks shuts down in the wake of SOE sale

The developers of the Storybricks artificial intelligence engine are closing up shop and moving on to other projects after parting ways with Daybreak Game Company (formerly Sony Online Entertainment).

The engine was previously expected to make its debut in Daybreak's upcoming Everquest Next, a project that saw some of its senior talent axed during a recent round of layoffs.

There's a remarkably frank farewell post on the company blog from Storybricks co-founders Rodolfo Rosini and Stéphane Bura that seeks to separate the recent sale of SOE to Columbus Nova from the decision to close Storybricks. 

However, they also claim they tried to buy the rights to Everquest franchise from Sony (with the backing of an investment bank) when they heard that SOE was up for sale. 

"We would have probably changed the server infrastructure allowing people to run their own servers," reads the post from Rosini and Bura. "It would not have been a very canonical EverQuest but we would have done the best to service our customers with the limited budget of an independent studio who wanted to punch above its weight." 

The pair cite painful travel demands, "a desire to go beyond games and find a different vision" and an inability to find a good buyer for the Storybricks toolset as the primary motivators for the shutdown.