this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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48
Embracer CEO confirms TimeSplitters studio faces closure before Christmas (www.videogameschronicle.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

this seems soon-to-be the Embracer cut. this company fucking sucks man. hate this shit

VGC reported earlier this month that Free Radical was at threat of being closed just two years after it was established, as part of huge company-wide cuts at Embracer and its owned publishers.

Although Embracer has yet to publicly confirm Free Radical's position, sources told VGC that Wingefors has now acknowledged in a company e-mail that the Nottingham, UK-based company could be closed on December 11, following the completion of a consultation process.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Why did they buy up everything ? Seemed to fall apart pretty quickly

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Borrowing money was cheap until it wasn't. When they bought the old Eidos stuff, everyone thought Square Enix was taking crazy pills. Now, given that everyone's cutting back right now, it looks more like they knew something Embracer didn't.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Wasn’t Embracer depending on a huge cash deal with the Saudis that fell through? Likely had an impact.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

I think regardless of that deal, they were already on the debt-go-round for long enough it would've caught up to them eventually. I can't imagine this was gonna be "one last job then we go clean." The market would continue to demand more and faster growth until they hit the wall one way or the other.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I honestly don't think anyone was taken back by Eidos being sold off. The biggest mess Square Enix did was let IOI go while putting out The Quiet Man. Hitman 2? No! The Quiet Man, one of the worst games of the decade, YES! MORE PLEASE! Eidos hadn't made a great game in a while but IOI had just put out a rather successful Hitman 1 season with large seasonal plans to keep it going. Now they are working on a James Bond game that everyone is excited about and Square is looking like an idiot. While Eidos will probably flop and flounder until they can get back their roots and build something substantial.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

People were taken aback by how little they sold for. IO Interactive bought themselves back from Square Enix some time ago.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Really? I didn't hear that people were shocked at thinking 300 million USD was that little of money for Eidos. It seems about right to me. Especially through Square Enix's eyes where they had just put out GOTG which didn't sell well enough to them.

Square Enix was going to close down or sell IO Interactive as they had pulled funding and were talking to other companies to sell them off. IOI employees triggered the MBO clause and made SE sell to them. This was only 2017.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

2017 is ancient history compared to the current economic climate, and that sale came out of an attempt to make games episodic to their detriment. $300M seemed low considering the buyer makes that money back with probably 1.5 Tomb Raider games, and Deus Ex and all of those other Eidos properties are a bonus. Yes, the deal seemed crazy for Square Enix at the time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I feel like your are over estimating the tomb raider profits there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They sold 9 million copies of Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I think I'm in the ballpark. And again, that's only Tomb Raider, when they're not blowing their money on a live service Avengers game that everyone knew was a bad idea.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Marvel's Avengers was mainly Crystal Dynamics, not Eidos-Montreal. I don't think another Tomb Raider would sell exactly as well as Shadow Of The Tomb Raider. Also, come to think of it, I don't think Eidos-Montreal has the Tomb Raider IP.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Embracer got all of these studios and most of their IPs in the sale, the two biggest being Tomb Raider and Deus Ex. I focused on Tomb Raider because it's the most valuable one in that purchase and almost makes the sale worth it on its own, or it seemed to before the economy turned, but they got plenty more besides just Tomb Raider.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Hmm, that's a good point, and looking back I didn't realize it was 300 million for both Crystal and Eidos... that's pretty cheap considering the IP attachment but I think Square Enix was also looking to shed a lot of their studios.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

They bought everything up because loans were cheaper and this positions Embracer as a strong IP holder. They now have lots of IPs they own and while you might think "Well they got no one to make the IPs for them!" that might be true in-house, although they certainly have plenty of successful studios still they are busy they have their pick of IPs. Additionally, you can license out IPs for a lot of money with additional funding from the actual sale of the game while a third-party publisher foots the bill entirely.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh, groovy. Smashing. Yay, capitalism...

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

Isn't it fun when the every IP that exists is owned by 6 companies?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Even simpler, just having that IP denies the competition access to it. In their eyes that creates value and at the end of the day that's all that matters to these companies holding IP. They can just sit on it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

That's certainly a factor but only if they are working on other IPs that might compete.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I got the sense Embracer got the things it got specifically because they were being sat on, creating no value for anyone.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

They were hoping to be bought up by a Saudi company but the deal fell through

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago

And Embracer claims another victim. It feels like they aren't going to have many studios left when they finish their "restructuring" process. At least Wingefors was nice enough to acknowledge that the employees, who might be about to lose their jobs, are going through a slightly more challenging time than the executives who are deciding which studio is next on the chopping block.