The Swedish conglomerate initially grew rapidly, but now the company led by Lars Wingefords is working to maintain its fortunes…

The Embracer Group has acquired huge companies of its own. Saber Interactive (known for porting World War Z, for example) and Gearbox Software (Borderlands) have become part of Embracer, forming separate divisions with additional studios underneath. Those plans changed after the Saudi investment, a $2 billion deal with Savvy Games, fell through. Since then, the Wingefors-led company has done everything it can to cut costs.

According to Jason Schreier, writing for Bloomberg, Embracer would sell Saber Interactive to unknown “private investors” for $500 million. Embracer would be selling the company, which has more than 3,500 employees, at a loss, since it bought it for $525 million in 2020. Development on several Saber Interactive projects will reportedly continue after the sale, including the mysteriously missing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Remake, which was announced for PlayStation 5 back in the day.

Kotaku, on the other hand, suspects another company: they reported the sale of Gearbox Software, but with far fewer details. The sale of Gearbox has been rumored for a long time, and founder Randy Pitchford held a meeting about the future of the company, and we’ll hear more details in March. It’s unlikely that they’ll remain under the wing of Embracer Group, even though they paid $1.3 billion for Gearbox in 2020. Gearbox has shelved several experimental projects after Embracer Group’s financial problems surfaced, with Borderlands 4 and Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands 2 now in development. The former has undergone a management change, the latter a soft reboot, and development on both games is well underway.

So, in the case of Embracer Group, it really is fair to say that the company has grown too big too fast when the failure of a single deal has led to such a huge change.

Source: WCCFTech, Bloomberg, Kotaku