A bit of gaming industry news! Swedish gaming group Embracer to split into three companies. You may remember this group from a couple of news posts we had this year: they were the ones who cancelled the next Deus Ex game and downsized by 8% of its employees (that's around 1400 people). And no they announced that they will be splitting into 3 companies.
The first one will be Asmodee Group, one of the largest publishers and distributors of video games. They will consist of 23 studios and have the largest IP portfolio (over 300).
The second one will be Coffee Stain & Friends which will specialise in indie games, A/AA games and free-to-play games for PC, consoles and mobile devices. They will consist of 20 studios and have an over-200 IP portfolio, including such names as Deep Rock Galactic, Goat Simulator, Satisfactory, Wreckfest, Teardown and Valheim, among others.
And the third one will be Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends which will be the creative centre that will develop and publish AAA games for PC and consoles with such IPs as Lord of the Rings, Dead Island, Metro and Tomb Raider, among others. By the way, Warhorse Studios and Kingdom Come Deliverance IP that @JokerZidarecently posted about will belong to this company.
The split will, expectedly, take time and will likely not happen before 2025. Still, it gives me hope that maybe this means that the new Deus Ex game is not so unrealistic after all. @GoLLuM13, @SKYTRiXSHA and @j7schultz, you're all in the industry, what do you think?
If the project was canceled, it's pretty unlikely it will happen, but you never know.
The split is most likely mainly for taxation and budgeting reasons; perhaps it is easier to do it when all eggs ain't in the same basket.
@SKYTRiXSHA Not sure, all 3 entities will still be owned by Embracer Group co-founder and current CEO Lars Wingefors. But I honestly do not know how taxation works and if doing this will result in an increase in budget. The reason they quoted for this split is to bring out the full potential of each team and give them leadership and strategic freedom.
I was honestly surprised that they cancelled that franchise, I thought it was doing very well.
@DoctorEldritch
Yeah, same.
The main thing that will happen is that decisions will probably be made faster. Perhaps there is a better company structure as well, but there will be many management people in each company.
@SKYTRiXSHA There are so many managers these days, that's true. Even despite examples that prove that companies can function well without overbearing managerial support, like Baldur's Gate 3. But I for one am hoping that this will allow for faster communication. At some gaming companies I worked for sometimes the right hand did not know what the left one was doing and projects were changed on the go and not always communicated properly, it was not good. But a smaller scale may help.
@DoctorEldritch
Less silos is always better, communication flow is better.
Thooough I don't think there is much communication on the top level in this kind of organizations, things just happen :D
@DoctorEldritch
Less silos is always better, communication flow is better.
Maybe this is why some one-person studios like ConcernedApe (Starder Walley) or Slavic Magic (Manor Lords) are sometimes so successful: communication is instantaneous if not unnecessary. Though those are the known success stories, not sure how many small developers go belly up for every success story.
@SKYTRiXSHA There is more news on this front, and not the good kind, I'm afraid. After Alone in the Dark did not do so well after its release, several Pieces Interactive employees got laid off. Sad.
@DoctorEldritch
Welp, 2024 is a hard year, just like 2023.
Indeed. And it is a leap year, too, those are superstitiously more troublesome than others. I'm afraid there's more: tinyBuild was not satisfied with the 2023 fiscal year and decided to close 2 studios. The first one is Demagic (helped with Hello Neighbor 2), and the second one is Moon Moose (made Cartel Tycoon).
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DoctorEldritch
