Understand What The Embracer Group Is And How It Bought ‘Tomb Raider’

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It is quite likely that you had never heard of the Embracer Group until last week, when the conglomerate announced the acquisition of studios Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montréal and Square Enix Montréal, which belonged to Japan’s Square Enix, for US$ 300 million. 1.5 billion).

Despite this, it cannot be said that the deal was exactly a surprise. At least since 2011, the Swedish company has been acquiring studios and distributors of small and medium-sized games and franchises that are in decline or that have been without new releases for years to form one of the largest electronic game conglomerates in Europe.

Already counting the acquisitions of the last week, the Embracer Group has 124 studios under its control, with more than 850 game franchises and about 14 thousand employees, numbers that put it on an equal footing with giants like Ubisoft (from “Assassin’s Creed” ), Take Two (“GTA 5”) and Electronic Arts (“The Sims” and “Fifa”).

Unlike these companies, the Swedish conglomerate takes a much less controlling stance on the work of its subsidiaries.

“From a commercial point of view, we don’t have a central decision-making center,” Lars Wingefors, CEO and largest shareholder of the Embracer Group, said in an interview with the Financial Times.

The executive sees in competitors, with many levels of directors and managers, an example not to be followed.

“They started to control the creators. That’s when things start to fall apart,” explains Wingefors, who took his first steps into the video game market in 1993, at the age of 16, starting a used game resale company.

In 2008, he founded Nordic Games Publishing with the idea of ​​investing in developing the types of games that would be in short supply on certain platforms.

A year later, the company released its first game: “We Sing”, a karaoke game for the Nintendo Wii inspired by the success of the PlayStation 2’s “SingStar”.

The Swedish company began to expand internationally in 2011, with the purchase of the estate of bankrupt Austrian distributors JoWooD.

The same strategy was used in 2013, when it bought for US$ 4.9 million practically all that was left of the bankruptcy process of the American distributor THQ (including franchises such as “Darksiders” and “Red Faction”), which led the company to to be renamed with THQ Nordic.

In the following years, the expansion continued. The company acquired the publisher Deep Silver, of “Saints Row” and “Dead Island”, and the Coffee Stain Studio, known for the bizarre (and hilarious) “Goat Simulator”, until it decided to adopt its current name, Embracer, in late 2019. Group, with the idea of ​​highlighting its conglomerate character.

Under the new name came the acquisitions of Saber Interactive studios (“World War Z”), 4A Games (from the “Metro” series) and Gearbox Entertainment (“Borderlands”), to name the main ones, and even entertainment companies from other areas, such as board game maker Asmodee (from “Catan” and “Dixit”, among others) and comic book and film publisher Dark Horse Media (“Sin City” and “Hellboy”).

With this history, it’s easy to understand how last week’s acquisition, which added franchises such as “Tomb Raider”, “Deux Ex” and “Thief” to the Embracer Group’s portfolio at a price considered low by market analysts – even more taking into account Considering the US$ 68.7 billion (R$ 378.2 billion) paid by Microsoft in the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, in January, it fits the conglomerate’s strategy of diversifying intellectual properties.

On Square Enix’s side, the move appears to be part of a shift in Japanese developers’ perception of the role that western studios could play in their business strategy, as GameIndustry.biz pointed out.

According to the company’s own report, the transaction “enables the launch of new businesses, continuing investments in fields such as blockchain, artificial intelligence and [computação em] a cloud”.

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game tip, new or old, for you to test

Tiny Room Story: Town Mystery

(PC, iOS and Android)

If you like to unravel mysteries and puzzles, “Tiny Room” is for you. It is a kind of virtual “escape room”, in which the player needs to search environments in search of tips to reach his goal. The title is free for cell phones, but it’s not one of those full of advertisements, which irritate the player.

update

news, launches, business and what else matters

• Microsoft has partnered with Epic Games to make “Fortnite” available for free via the cloud. In this way, it is again possible to play the game on iOS devices for the first time since 2020, when the game’s application was banned from the App Store amid a dispute between Epic and Apple. To play just go to xbox.com/play and sign in with a Microsoft account.

• In a sign that things are not going well for the “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time” remake, Ubisoft has moved the game’s development from its studios in India to the series’ birthplace in Montreal. On twitterthe game’s development team stated that the move is intended to “deliver the best experience for this remake of a classic, when it’s ready”.

• The Summer Game Fest, which tries to replace E3 as the main event of the games industry in the world, will be held on June 9, at 4 pm. The show, broadcast over the internet, should serve as a launching pad for the main titles of the coming years.

• Considered one of the main independent gaming events in Brazil, the BIG Festival will once again be held in person in São Paulo, between the 7th and 10th of July, after two years of virtual editions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The event, however, is no longer free and will have tickets from R$ 46.40.

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games that will be released in the next few days and promotions that are worth it

May 10

• “Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising”*: price not available (PC, Xbox One/X/S)

• “Salt and Sacrifice”: BRL 37.90 (PC), price not available (PS 4/5)

• “This War of Mine: Final Cut”*: BRL 74.95 (Xbox Series X/S), price not available (PlayStation 5)

• “Unpacking”*: price not available (PS 4/5)

May 13

• “Evil Dead: The Game”: R$75.99 (PC), R$147.45 (Xbox One/X/S), R$199.50 (PS 4/5)

*Available on Xbox Game Pass

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