I understood your post as “150 people from Saber will be joining 4A”.
Hmm that is interesting and disappointing, I would much prefer if 4A stayed focusing on singleplayer narrative games.
This is quite the get for the Embracer. I love Flying Wild Hog, and cannot wait to for Shadow Warrior 2 and their unannounced FPS.
Holy shit, that’s way more than I would have expected for FWH. They must really like what they are cooking.
Well, they bought FWH… and a bit more.
Embracer’s new studios are as follows: Thinking Ape Entertainment (Canada), Nimble Giant Entertainment (Argentina), Snapshot Games (Bulgaria), Mad Head Games (Serbia), Zen Studios (Hungary), 34BigThing (Italy), IUGO Mobile Entertainment (Canada), Purple Lamp Studios (Australia), Quantic Lab (Romania), Coffee Stain North (Sweden) and the UK-based Silent Games.
Koch Media, a subsidiary of Embracer Group, has also acquired the Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, responsible for the Shadow Warrior franchise.
As if all these studios weren’t enough, Embracer has also acquired the New York-based PR and influencer relations agency Sandbox Strategies. Altogether, these 13 acquisitions add least 1,273 new to Embracer’s ranks, bringing their total employees up to over 5,000.
It’s quite the spree. Among the many acquisitions, a few stand out – such as Snapshot Games, the Bulgaria-based studio behind Phoenix Point, co-founded by Julian Gollop – creator of the X-COM Franchise. Snapshot Games will form a part of Embracer’s wholly owned subsidiary Saber Interactive. Snapshot will operate as an independent studio under Saber.
“We are thrilled that Snapshot is joining forces with the world class team at Saber. Julian and I look forward to working with Andrey, Matt and Lars to develop and expand the Phoenix Point universe, and to bring new IP to a global audience” says David Kaye, co-founder and president of Snapshot Games.
Another standout is Silent Games, a Newcastle-based studio founded in 2018 by Sally Blake and Jospeh Rogers. Embracer has acquired Silent Games via its subsidiary, Amplifier Game Invest, and Silent Games is Amplifier’s first investments in the UK. Over the coming years, Silent Games hopes to grow from its current employee count of 4 to a 30 person-strong team.
THQ’s parent company, Embracer, has merged with Gearbox:
Embracer Group AB (“Embracer”), has today entered into a merger agreement with US based The Gearbox Entertainment Company (“Gearbox”). Gearbox, based in Frisco, TX and founded in 1999, has been self-funded by the employees from inception. Post-closing, Gearbox will become a seventh operating group as a wholly own subsidiary of Embracer. Gearbox Founder and CEO Randy Pitchford will continue to lead Gearbox, and Randy Pitchford and the employees of Gearbox will jointly become a significant shareholder in Embracer. Gearbox brings highly creative AAA development studios, North American publishing capabilities and a robust IP portfolio, including critically acclaimed and iconic franchises like Borderlands, Brothers in Arms and Homeworld. On a preliminary basis, based on Embracer’s accounting principles, Gearbox generated net sales of SEK 1,037 million and Adjusted Operational EBIT[1] of SEK 417 million during the nine month period from January 1 until September 30, 2020. In calendar year 2019, Gearbox generated net sales of SEK 1,052 million and Adjusted Operational EBIT of SEK 317 million.
Randy’s staying on as CEO.
Weird to use the word “merge” when Embracer just acquired Gearbox in exchange for money and shares.
In any case, eventhough Randy is disliked by many, this is a big get. And Aspyr too. I just hope Wingefors will want to steer this ship himself and not sell it to Tencent.
That’s what a merger is.
Also:
I thought merger is when two companies combine to create a new joint organization. Which does not seem to be what is happening here. Plus I don’t think Pitchford is going to have the same authority/responsibility as Wingefors. Or am I wrong?
Yes you’re wrong on the first (though they are in some sense a joint organisation as they have the same ultimate ownership), not on the second, as far as I know. There’s nothing about a merger that requires it to be a merger of equals, or for the two legal entities to become one legal entity (as opposed to one becoming a subsidiary of the other, or of a holding company, which is what happens in 99.9% of mergers).
Paul is correct, a merger is a union of two different entities to form a new, third entity. An absorption of one into the other would be an acquisition.
It is never used that way in real life though. Like, one of the sister publications of the one I work on has “merger” in its name and it covers almost exclusively what that link would describe as an acquisition. Mergers and acquisitions are used interchangeably in the actual practice of M&A.
You’ll never make VP by citing the Corporate Finance Institute. I thought you’d be better than this when I pushed to get you groomed.
Yep. And for all we know it was done as a merger rather than an outright sale for tax-favorable reasons (it appears to be a stock swap, which would add the new folks to the equity ownership of the overall group, which I don’t think is unreasonable to characterize as a merger). Whatever works to achieve the end goal is what gets used, labels are for press releases.
I am not an attorney, though I do have experience with working on contracts from a technical expertise point of view and the main thing I took away from this was that words were very carefully selected and often had legally binding consequences. I remember we had to go through and update the word ‘will’ with ‘shall’ in one instance. So my assumption would be that if the words merger and acquisition exist as separate terms, there is a contractually meaningful reason for doing so.
Woohoo, Deep Silver has reformed Free Radical Design with some of the original co-founders to work on a new Timesplitters game.
Embracer’s spending spree continues, picking up another seven studios:
- 3D Realms (going to Saber)
- Slipgate Ironworks (prev Interceptor, now working on Graven and going to Saber)
- Digixart (indie studio, going to Koch)
- Force Field (VR games, going to Koch’s VR subsidiary)
- Easy Trigger (Huntdown, going to Coffee Stain)
- Ghost Ship Games (Deep Rock Galactic, going to Coffee Stain)
- Crazy Labs (Israeli casual mobile studio/publisher, sounds like it’s becoming a new branch)
- Grimfrost (e-commerce and Viking merchadice for some reason)
“Enormous corporate blob” got a chuckle out of me.
And these are some potentially very good buys, Ghost Ship Games, 3D Realms and Slipgate are of particular interest.
On it goes.
US-based Demiurge Studios is best known for its recent work in mobile, having previously specialised in co-development in the AAA space.
The studio has produced free-to-play titles such as Crazy Taxi Gazillionaire and Marvel Puzzle Quest and was owned by Sega’s mobile division for five years, before a management buyout took place last year.
The acquisition is due to be completed by the end of August, and brings a team of 68 developers into Saber. Embracer’s management expects Demiurge to generate revenues of $15 million in 2021.
Developer and porting specialist Fractured Byte is based in Estonia, with around 50 employees spread across its headquarters in Tallinn and three locations in Ukraine.
Founded in 2018, the studio has assisted with the development of Switch ports such as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 and Borderlands: The Legendary Collection.
In fact, both Fractured Byte and Demiurge Studios have previously worked with Borderlands developer Gearbox Entertainment, which was also acquired by Embracer earlier this year in a deal worth up to $1.3 billion.
The Fractured Byte acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of September.
Finally, Russian software testing and games development firm SmartPhone Labs has been brought on board, adding over 100 employees to Saber Interactive.
