The video game industry is experiencing a stronger wave of mergers and acquisitions than in previous years. Swedish holding company Embracer Group has become one of the latest protagonists of this wave of mergers and acquisitions. A few years ago, most gamers hadn't heard of the name, and now its size in the game industry has overwhelmed traditional forces such as Ubisoft and Capcom, and it's even more so after yesterday announced the acquisition of Square Enix's Tomb Raider and Marvel's Avengers development studios.
The rise of the Embracer Group is not something that can be summed up in two words. What started as a cash-out investment in a retail company now sits with a variety of independently run publishers and independent studios, weaving into a complex network capable of making and selling every type of game you can imagine. The company, led by Swedish businessman Lars Wingefors, was founded in 2011 and after a long time in the making began waving money at the industry's major game makers.
The company, which started out as Nordic Games Holding, grew up with Wingefors' experience in selling a large number of video game tails in international markets. After selling tail goods for EA for a while, Nordic finally decided to sell something of its own. First they ate the assets of Australian publisher JoWooD in 2011 (Gothic Dynasty, Spell Power), and then in 2013 they threw up blockbuster news, taking THQ (Darksiders, Homeland Line) in one fell swoop, and directly renaming themselves THQ Nordic.
At the time, it seemed that these operations were a bit of a robbery, but it was likely that they were not very profitable. But then Nordic Games came up with Darksiders 3, letting everyone know that their ambitions were far from taking in the empty shelves of a few bankrupt companies. The company went public in 2016 and changed its name to Embracer in 2019, and now has more than 100 studios and publishers, employing tens of thousands of people, surpassing Activision Blizzard in terms of numbers.
In addition to buying, buying, buying, and buying, the group was also involved in a scandal in 2019 for cooperating with the 8Chan forum suspected of abetting crimes. The company's owner, Wingefors, then publicly apologized and calmed the situation.
Yesterday, embracer group broke big news again, for a $300 million acquisition of Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal three SE overseas studios, but also won more than 50 games such as "Thief", "Kane's Legacy" and "Tomb Raider", and the group has 1100 more game developers.
However, the Embracer Group is not a "blockbuster" this time, to be precise, it has been "banging" non-stop for several years.
Embracer Group's major acquisitions in recent years are as follows:
April 2020: $525 million acquisition of port studio Saber Interactive
February 2021: $1.3 billion acquisition of Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment
April 2021: $640 million acquisition of advertising-based mobile game publisher Easybrain
August 2021: $313 million acquisition of 3D Realms and seven other studios
December 2021: $3 billion acquisition of French board game and RPG publisher Asmodee
Big publishers like EA and Activision are now sticking to their New Year strategies, while Embracer is constantly picking up eggs from his basket. They have Resident Evil Mutants, Zombie World Wars, 4A Games' Subway series, Dambuster's Homeland 2: Revolution, and even Dead Island 2, which has been difficult to give birth for 8 years, they have all been under their command. In addition to THQ's legacies (such as the purchase of Amara Kingdom in 2018), they are also eyeing emerging independent studios, such as Ghost Simulator and Little Nightmare.
Next, they're going to launch Sopranos: Reboot, produced by Volition Studios. The studio experience is even more magical. In 2000, THQ bought Vortex. When it went bankrupt in 2013, Volition was sold to Koch Media as a member of Deep Silver. Nordic Games first bought their Summoner and Red Faction, and in 2018 simply bought Koch Media, and Then Vortex mixed with THQ.
In addition to rebooting the old IP, Embracer is also restructuring the old studio. Free Radical Design Studios, which consisted of the developers of the 1999 N64 editions of 007 GoldenEye and Perfect Darkness, went bankrupt and sold to Crytek in 2008. After the poor operation, they were sold to Koch Media. See here you get it again. Last year, Embracer teamed up with former founders Steve Ellis and David Doak to restructure Free Radical Design, bringing the classic Space Splitter back to life.
After the bankruptcy of THQ, the industry seems to have no place for medium-sized issuers, and the market is all controlled by first-party manufacturers and hundreds of millions of large issuers. Embracer carved out a new path from it. Their goal is not to be the top of the industry, but bets often have some gains, such as last year's "Heroic Spirit Temple" is a good illustration of this problem.
What we want now is for Eidos Montreal to make a difference in the new environment and give the Break Bad franchise a new look. At the same time, I also hope that "Tomb Raider" can regain its former glory status.