Huge gaming behemoth Embracer Group has been trimming down significantly as of late - with some of its in-house studios even fully closed in the wake of a huge restructuring process at the company. And, new reports are suggesting that a couple of the group's remaining studios are now in the midst of being sold off.
According to Bloomberg, Saber Interactive is in the middle of a $500 million deal to become privately-owned, and according to Kotaku, Borderlands developer Gearbox is also in the process of being sold by Embracer Group.
At present, neither of these deals have been publicly confirmed by Embracer or their respective dev teams, but they both seem likely given the reliability of each source - along with Embracer's recent record of culling teams of course. Timesplitters studio Free Radical closed late last year, along with Saints Row developer Volition way back in September 2023.
At least these two studios don't appear to be closing down in any way, but these could sill be massive deals in a tumultuous time for the video game industry. Microsoft, Sony, EA and loads of other teams have been announcing layoffs as of late to help keep their organisations streamlined, and ultimately, to save money.
What do you think to these reports? Reckon they'll both happen soon? Leave your thoughts down below.
[source bloomberg.com, via kotaku.com]
Comments 11
Just hurry up and sell IO and Crystal Dynamics to MS, they are already working for them
Seems like Embracer is folding up. Do they have any high profile releases scheduled at this point?
It's good to see Embracer selling off studios and IP. I was legitimately afraid they were gonna die and all those properties would be stuck in legal limbo for the rest of eternity.
We are never getting a new Duke Nukem game are we?
Well Xbox could def use those ips to bolster gamepass
Jason Schreier is reporting that "most but not all" of Saber's teams are being sold. So we don't really know which are not included yet or what this means for IP.
Leaving embracer seems like a win but who are the investors making it happen? If it turns out to be that Saudi Arabia group or something similar it might not be such a good thing.
Microsoft should buy Crystal Dynamics. They missed a great opportunity when they were sold by Square Enix and then they hired them for Perfect Dark.
Someone is going to need to do a deep dive into Embracer group. What was their goal? Why were they buying up so many dev studios just to sell them off or shut them down?
Embracer should sell them all, sell everything.
Couldn't they have done this before they cancelled the next Deus Ex game?
Hopefully with Embracer imploding on itself someone will pick up that IP and finally finish Adam Jensen's goddamn story.
Embracer had a pretty weak plan, but the global economy and videogame landscape went south at a very bad time for them (plus that partnership fell through that would have given them a lot of funding).
Embracer got a ton of IP in the deals but none of them are really must play AAA IP. Tomb Raider, Saints Row, Borderlands were the big ones and those feel like they might have aged out of their heydays.
The weird thing is that AA games are kind of having a resurgence and they have literally hundreds of those caliber IP. These are the types of games that can easily be converted to mobile titles too. Maybe they can make that work for them, eventually.
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...