John Smedley was born on the 27th August 1968, in San Diego, California USA, and is a video game developer, best known to the world as the former president of Daybreak Game Company, a position he held until 2015 from 1996. He came to prominence with the creation of the extremely popular MMO RPG game “Everquest” (1999).
Have you ever wondered how rich John Smedley is, as of mid- 2017? According to authoritative sources, it has been estimated that Smedley’s net worth is as high as $20 million, an amount earned through his successful career, which has been active since the early ‘90s.
John Smedley Net Worth $20 Million
From an early age, John became interested in table-top RPG games, including Dungeons & Dragons, and with the advancement of computer technologies, his love for games only became greater. He went to Mt. Carmel High School, and after matriculation enrolled at San Diego State University.
He started developing video games in the early ‘90s, with the launch of Knight Technologies. After a few successful years working on his own under the Verant Interactive, Inc. brand, which was bought by Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2000, he was appointed by Sony Online Entertainment as the head of Sony Interactive Studios America’s (SISA) development of an online RPG video game.
Inspired by “Dungeons & Dragons”, he started creating the MMO RPG game “EverQuest”, which came out in 1999. Thanks to the popularity of the original creation, “EverQuest” received several expansions, including “EverQuest 2”, “ EverQuest: The Ruins of Kunark”, “Lost Dungeons of Norrath”, “Dragons of Norath”, “The Buried Sea”, and many other expansions, all of which contributed steadily to the growth of Smedley’s net worth.
John remained head of Sony Online Entertainment until 2015, when he threatened one of the members of a hacking group, Lizard Squad. A year prior the incident, the same hacking group made claims that there were explosive devices on a plane on which John Smedley was flying. The original course of the plane was from Dallas, Texas to San Diego, California, but after the bomb claims, its course was changed to Phoenix, Arizona; of course it was a hoax.
Following his resignation, John had started his own video game development studio, called Pixelmage games, and began working on a game “Hero’s Song”, however, two years later, the studio ceased its operations and closed its doors. In 2017, Amazon announced the opening of a game studio, based in San Diego and headed by John Smedley, in addition to the two studios it already operates in Seattle and Orange County – no doubt John’s net worth is set to expand further, with such backing.
Regarding his personal life, John is married and has three children, however, there is no further information about his marriage.
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