Embracer Group won’t be selling any more studios but isn’t ruling out acquisitions

29 March, 2024

The Embracer Group logo

Embracer Group has confirmed that their restructuring process has been completed, with no more studios for sale.

In June 2023, Embracer announced it would be restructuring and promised studio closures, game cancellations and lay-offs would follow in the coming months.

Saints Row developer Volition was closed in September, two months shy of its 30th anniversary and in December, the news broke that the recently revived Free Radical Design was being shut down and their new TimeSplitters project was being scrapped.

Yesterday (March 28) Embracer announced it was selling Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment to Take-Two Interactive, in a deal worth around £365million. It was also confirmed that Gearbox Publishing wasn’t part of that deal, with a majority of the team laid off.

However Embracer has now confirmed that its restructuring process has come to an end.

In an earnings call, CEO Lars Wingefors said that he was being approached weekly by numerous buyers about acquiring “certain assets within the group” including Embracer-owned studios. “And I’ve been very clear that they’re not for sale, because they’re a very important part for the group and for the shareholders of the group going forward,” he said.

He went on to say that studios were sold because they had negative cashflow.

Embracer still owns a number of studios though including THQ Nordic, Crystal Dynamics and Edios-Montréal. In 2022, Embracer Group bought Middle-earth Enterprises, which gave the company rights to The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit.

Wingefors went on to say that it was “way too early to start talking about” acquiring more studios, but didn’t rule it out. “Our highest focus and priority is how we set up ourselves and structure ourselves, and utilise our assets we have within the group, and have them work together, and how we leverage them better working together and utilising different functions,” he explained. “Our focus right now is to increase profitability and cashflow by simply making better products and games.”

In other news, Arrowhead Game Studios has released a surprise update for Helldivers 2 that brings two new guns to the Super Earth arsenal with fans already calling the The LAS-99 Quasar Cannon the best weapon in the game. 

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