Embracer has already closed Volition Studios (the Saints Row devs); is reportedly thinking of selling Gearbox (Borderlands) and closing Free Radical (TimeSplitters); and has made layoffs at Crystal Dynamics (Tomb Raider), Beamdog (KOTOR remake), and Zen Studios (Pinball FX).
The bad news continued in last week's quarterly earnings briefing, when Embracer confirmed that "15 mainly unannounced projects" have been written down (meaning reduced in value, as opposed to a write-off, which eliminates the asset from the books altogether) and that an eye-watering 900 people were being laid off.
And there's more to come, with Embracer's spokesperson saying "further restructurings, closures, buyouts, are in process, and that will lead to additional headcount reductions."
In a year that's been full of such ghastly news, these are some of the most savage cuts, closures, and cancellations made by any one company. So what's gone so badly wrong at Embracer?
GI.biz has a good piece on this: "the Embracer story is simple - and is just an exaggerated version of what has happened at many other companies recently. The firm took advantage of the ready availability of investment cash during an era of low interest rates to go on a decade-long spending spree" but then "interest rates shot up, and the Saudi petrodollars that had been scattered like water around high risk businesses in the 2010s suddenly evaporated" and Embracer was "faced with the reality that without constant injections of external cash the business it had built couldn't sustain itself."
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