cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/games@sh.itjust.works/t/445731
Gearbox is reportedly the latest studio to be affected by Embracer Group’s restructuring efforts.
In June, Embracer announced a “comprehensive restructuring programme” to help recover from its large spending spree over recent years and a 40 percent drop in share price following a report of a failed “major strategic partnership” with Savvy Games Group, which is backed by the Saudi Arabian government.
As part of the restructuring, Saints Row developer Volition Games was shut down “effective immediately” at the end of last month. A new report from Reuters claims that Borderlands developer Gearbox will be one of the next studios Embracer sheds.
UPDATE 5.40pm: Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier reports that Gearbox has today emailed employees confirming Embracer Group is, at the very least, considering parting ways with the Borderlands studio - although a specific course of action is yet to be decided on.
“The base case is that Gearbox remains a part of Embracer,” Gearbox chief communications officer Dan Hewitt told staff in an email seen by Bloomberg. “However, there are many options under consideration, including Gearbox’s transfer, taking Gearbox independent, and others. Ultimately, we’ll move ahead with whichever path is best for both Gearbox and Embracer.”
“Nothing has been decided yet,” Hewitt added, “but there will be a lot of speculation in the coming weeks.”
The whole Embracer situation is so weird to me. I hadn’t heard about them until the news broke that they were buying some of the Tolkien licenses and had already been buying a whole bunch of game studios. Cut to a couple months later and Embracer can’t get rid off all these studios fast enough apparently bleeding money left and right.
Where did they suddenly come from? Or was I just out of the loop on them?
Until reasonably recently, Embracer was known as Nordic Games. Their plan was simple and quite effective; buy old game IP, release remasters, make reasonably-budgeted sequels aimed at niches of the industry being missed by the increasingly laser-focussed AAA publishers.
It worked for a good few years, and they became a Katamari of game development studios. An increasingly unwieldy Katamari. And like any good Katamari they started picking up bigger and bigger things. Suddenly instead of spending a couple of thousand on a struggling legacy developer, they were paying upwards of a billion at a time, swallowing up things like Gearbox, Asmodee, Dark Horse Comics, Middle Earth Enterprises, Square Enix Europe. They lost focus and just kept buying things, including things they couldn’t afford to buy. Eventually, a planned deal with the Saudis fell through, and that Katamari just slammed directly into a wall.
Thank you for the great comment, that was super informative. I didn’t know Nordic Games became Embracer. That explains it a bit why I thought they came out of nowhere.
Can’t remember the exact details, but I think it was something along the lines of them acquiring all these ips with loaned money, banking on a big merger that eventually fell through.