It's been a rough seven or eight months for Embracer Group, as the huge gaming company gutted some of its studios and cancelled plenty of projects during a taxing 2023 for its business. Last summer we heard about this change of course ahead of time - and a new financial report has laid bare the full extent of Embracer's restructuring program.
The company's end of 2023 financials have now been released, resulting in some quite shocking stats. Outlet VGC has been doing some maths here, and it seems that in June 2023 Embracer had 153 unannounced games in development; dropping to 124 titles by December. That means that a total of 29 yet-to-be-revealed projects have been cancelled in roughly six months.
What's maybe even more stark about these figures is that they only count unannounced titles. If Embracer is accurate with its wording, things like the cancellation of Free Radical's Timesplitters reboot are on top of these 29 other casualties - unless the team still counted that one as unannounced internally. The figure is a huge loss either way.
The company's financials also reveal that seven internal studios have been closed in that same timeframe — including Free Radical and Volition — and over 1,000 jobs have been lost as a result of all this chopping and changing. Here's hoping that 2024 ends up being a smoother ride for Embracer's teams and its workforce.