Some background on Embracer.
Their piece of shit CEO, Lars Wingefors, was in discussion with a gulf national fund on a huge $2 billion investment.
He never got anything legally binding, but before securing the investment he went on a massive spending spree.
The national fund got cold feet and Wingefors had to cut up all of Embracer to account for his mistake.
You would think such a childish error would result in immediate dismissal and essentially a permanent blacklisting from executive positions (not only in the gaming industry).
Nothing like that happened, I believe the Embracer board is full of his friends and family. He just went with it.
This is the kind of stuff that shows that polemics around hard works and meritocracy are at least partially propaganda to keep the plebs in line.
Embracer is also splitting into three separate companies to shed the tainted Embracer name, all still owned and run by Wingefors of course.
Asmodee Group (for board games) and Coffee Stain Publishing (for indie games) are the only two with official names last I heard. The unnamed third is the big one and Embracer’s direct successor, but I guess they’re delaying naming it to minimize bad press associated with the new name.
I hate
embracereraser group, fuck em for cancelling the Deus Ex game.I’m playing Mankind Divided right now and loving it, already bracing for the heartbreak of the unresolved cliffhanger I know is coming.
Not a surprise. Anything this company touches is sinking. These giant gaming conglomerates don’t make an iota of business sense. The whole point of a conglomerate buying a whole bunch of similar businesses, aka horizontal integration, is so these businesses can share the same knowledge, infrastructure and supply lines and benefit from economies of scale to lower costs. Like an oil conglomerate using their own tankers to transport oil for all their subsidiaries. But in the gaming industry there is barely any overlap between two studios where synergy can happen. Except for the business admin, promotion and advertising side. But that is a tiny fraction of the costs of big budget production. The biggest cost is on the production side and every studio needs their own set of directors, producers, designers, artists, programmers etc. Another goal of horizontal integration is capturing market share, but with games you run the risk of cannibalizing your own sales especially how Embracer is doing it since most studios in their portfolio are from the same region in the world making games for similar markets.
EA and Ubisoft tried this before and failed miserably and they sold or shuttered almost every studio they bought. The only one who does a good job at it is Sony, but even they don’t have as many studios as Embracer and they rely on Chinese digital asset sweatshops.
I was really hoping this was April Fools
