https://www.gamesindustry.biz/report-saber-interactive-buys-itself-back-from-embracer-in-500m-deal
Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inboxEmbracer Group is poised to sell off Saber …
From Bloomberg (via archive.ph): https://archive.ph/63F4L
They seemed to be acquiring and funding good things for a while there, and then out of the blue went "oops, spent a bit too much there lol, gotta melt some of these down for cash" and then threw some seriously good shit right into the crucible.
They acquired far too much as they expected a $2B deal with Saudi Arabia. That fell through and they’ve been shedding everything but the CEOs (at least from what I can find)
Even if that deal had worked out, it would not have left a nice taste in the mouth.
They really shouldn't have played as fast and loose as they did.
"Out of the blue". They were gobbling up studios as nothing more than assets. Any "good" that came of that process was purely incidental and this sandbag dumping when they started to sink was inevitable.
Good for them. Also glad they are going to continue developing the KOTOR remake, although with everything that's happened with that project it feels like it will be years before we see it again.
This is crazy, between this and Gearbox leaving they're almost dismantling in front of our eyes. I don't think I've ever seen something like this in the gaming industry, at least not in this scale.
Im glad these studios are seeing the writing on the wall and taking control away from Embracer. Embracer is just fucking shit up closing up studios and killing off games in development.
And I asked this elsewhere, but what the hell is Embracer doing? Theyre eating themselves alive by doing this. Whats their endgame? How are they supposed to have any profits when theyre dumping all their product? Just how much debt did they get themselves in?
This deal happened because Embracer is shedding debt, and this is how you shed it. They just listed their debt a few months ago as 2.12B, so this and Gearbox will go a long way toward getting it down to a level they can actually afford. Meanwhile, it's very hard to track what they still own, but one of those things is Tomb Raider. They'll also have tons and tons of smaller bets. Alone in the Dark, Titan Quest II, and Gothic look to still be under their control, for instance.
iirc these are the guys working on the Knights of the Old Republic remake, right? Good news for that project if that’s the case, and good news for Saber in general!
That's great news, I just hope they stay independent, and Microsoft etc doesn't buy them. Are they private now when they bought themselves?