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Who could have guessed a company trying to monopolize on game publishing would collapse. No one could see it coming.

It’s the start of a new chapter! Chapter 11, that is.

The issue here is the Embracer is pushing parts of their 2b+ debt on these three companies. Asmodee is set to pick up 900m of that debt, something they didn't have before embracer group acquired them. This is nothing more than spreading thing to not be accountable for theianagement of fund in my opinion

So them acquiring developers was literally the Embrace of Death.

They did the Microsoft acquisition model without the Microsoft money.

As a big fan of board games, it sucks that they stuck Asmodee with nearly 1 billion in debt for Embracer's vast overreach is acquiring studios.

Bellular did a slight injustice here. They failed to mention that each of these 3 new groups are getting ALL of Embracer's debt. Embracer is trying to go free with no consequences.

What they did is a despicable and disgusting disgrace

This glosses over the worst part: Asmodee has been saddled with over £800 million in debt. Embracer basically used a bunch of banking tricks to leverage the debt it owed against Asmodee before they spun it off, turning Asmodee into a sacrificial lamb. To put it in perspective, a healthy company has between 0.3 and 0.6 years of profit as a debt ratio. Asmodee will be looking at 3.9. No one sane is going to see it as a safe investment and it will starve to death whilst Embrace walks away, scot free.

"Lets split up", "Yeah we can do more damage that way"

It's interesting how large corporations and publishers are supposed to be this somewhat stabilizing economic force that provides job security and financial growth for investors by diversifying their resources, but instead routinely results in mass layoffs, destruction of share price, and economic instability, all due to fiscal irresponsibility on the part of a bunch of greedy rich people who use their employees as meat shields and sacrificial lambs any time they face anything remotely close to consequences. Really makes you wonder why we even bother.

Them succeeding would have been very negative in its own way. This shit should totally be illegal.

Too much with not enough profits for growth. i.e. Games have to be released to make money. Also Rock and Stone!!

Embracer Group was like Eurojank EA, and it will not be missed. If a studio that made an indie or AA game you loved got acquired by Embracer, you knew that whatever they put out next would be a disappointment. That business model has no place in an artistic medium. And as for games themselves, just because it runs on a computer does not make it a tech product with tech industry rules. But that's a story for another day.

Ah, yes. The classic "We screwed our brand so let's just rename it and hopefully trick customers into thinking it's not us"

"Middle Earth and Friends." And just like that Embracer basically told everyone what they think of IPs like Killing Floor, Tomb Rider, Metro, Dead Island, Kingdom Come, and all the other IPs under that specific umbrella: they are secondary to the Middle Earth IP.

It just makes me wonder if Embracer knows their name is cancer and they will be pulling the strings behind the scenes. The old Shell corporation trick.

Repeat after me everyone : investors are just rich people with a gambling problem.

I didn't even know Deep Rock / Ghostship were snatched up by Embracer. Their basically hard stop on development for a game i love so much last year suddenly makes a LOT more sense 💀

I work in one of the company's in the Embracer Group (will likely be the Coffee Stains Group After things are decided. Also ask any questions you want and I'll answer them if I can), and let me tell you: The "Ideal" they "proposed" to studios was to collaborate and effectively keep the money all in the same bag. But everyone was asking how and why they would even do crossover development if they aren't already doing it, as there were no discounts between services provided by any of the studios to any of the other studios in the group, so there was actually no benefit. So EVERYONE has been asking and never getting a solid answer as to what even was the benefit of joining the group... Then the only real answer was "We got bought out for a big amount that kept us a float". Any thought of collaboration between studios made 0 sense. These studios that would need dev crossover or co-dev work, would rather hire a cheap outsourcing studio. So yes, this has all just been a stupid corporate game the entire time, and these assholes have been gambling with beloved IPs and people's lives the entire time. Even the CEOs of the individual companies barely have any idea what's happening and have 0 say in "group" decisions.

Vanguard and Canadian Pension Plan as shareholders and Embracer went under. Why am I not surprised?

Somebody got rich... The leaders of Embracer Group should be investigated.

Good ol' private equity. Embracer group dissolves, execs all get their payouts and the surviving companes all take on a crushing amount of debt with zero positives.

I didn't even know Coffee Stain was owned by Embracer.

What kind of "stewards" are we talking wrt Middle-earth and Friends? Denethor?

It was a short term vision of bundling companies for one sales and when that fell through, they have no other plan, short or long-term

Middle-earth enterprises and friends… MEEF… they will now always be MEEF to me.

Wait wait wait... They've got Crystal Dynamics and Eidos together! This can only mean they can make greatest crossover in history: Deus Gex!!!

I'm nervous for the ramifications this will have on the tabletop side of gaming. Embracer gobbled up an alarming amount of space in that industry and enacted some pretty sweeping chamnges to the studios it bought. I'm worried for the games I love and the developers who make them.

Although those names are weird, the press releases have a footnote that the names of the groups are temporary and will be decided at a later date - see 5:26.

in a year they will try buying each other

I saw on the list of owners that multiple bancs and investor/pension funds are heavily in the ownership of this group and they will for sure not hesitate to back out if they think it is dying.

Their company names legit sound like something out of Borderlands or High on Life lol

This is just EVERY Institution these days though. They're all based only on short term stock speculation and the bailout economics of failing upwards

I think Amazon did a separate deal with the Tolkien Estate, as (apparently) shows of more than 8 episodes were not part of the original deal with Saul Zaentz.

All I hear is: "big money washing machine done it's work and now we throw it away" but i'm just a crazy silly dude.

I cannot help but think this makes things much worse for all involved. This sounds like Lars saying 'This is too complicated to manage and decide periorities. So we divide what is left into three pots and see which sinks and which swims." I can see 2 of the 3 groups failing and us losing 2/3 of the development studios and IPs Embracer still hold. Totally baffling situation that makes things even worse fro the developers.

THQ failed because they were working on too many projects without meaningful investment returns while being in significant debt. Embracer failed because they gobbled up too many studios without meaningful investment returns while being in significant debt. The more things change, the more they stay the same. This fu**ing industry never learns. Personally I'm bummed we'll never see a new Deus Ex and Timeplitters any time soon 😥

Before they had one Board of great Leards to pay-off out of dev money - Now they have THREE! What a improvement!

Privatise gains, socialise losses.

i hope people see taht this is first and foremost a result of 0% interest rates followed by 5% interest rates. if it hadn't been embracer it would have been some other guy with 0% interest loans

And to think I was somewhat happy when Embracer bought Tomb Raider from SE. I mean we did get Tomb Raider remastered, but honestly, at what freaking cost

If this messed up KCD2 or Warhorse Studios more broadly, I say we grab the swords & maces IRL.

Oh my goodness! Who could have possibly seen this coming!

I hope none of this messed up any of the companies. But I'm certainly worried about a few games listed here, especially Coffee Stain published ones.

But what happens to the AA devs? I see Ttrpg, AAA and indie. Wheres the AA stuff?

It's like it was run by people who thought interest rates could never change. Too bad that money wasn't put into something that had a chance.

I'm worried for Star Trek Online. Over the last few years Cryptic has made STO more of a ST themed casino with more gambling & less storyline content releases. I fear DECA will "double-down" on that approach, but I hope DECA will take a step back & focus a bit more on creating game content instead of just gambling galore.

It's hearwarming that the M&A guys can preen just as readily at how the collapse of their house of cards vindicates their vision as they did back when they were building the thing.

Anyone remember Sierra On-Line? Growing, merging, etc. Despite the constant string of successful hits over the years they had to make cuts. They ended up restructuring multiple times, layoffs and many cancelled projects. No idea how much the game landscape was changed back then. Same thing today when companies make big mistakes. I recall Sierra signed the rights for the Babylon 5 TV series (i think for 9 years?), it was being talked about in the press. Then the game disappeared under one of those restructures. Later video and audio from the game surfaced on the internet but it was gone along with any chance of a Babylon 5 game. Sierra still had exclusive rights so no one else could publish an alternative. Apparently dispite all the work done on it, It no longer fit in with the type of games they wanted to publish. I'm sure many more games disappeared around the same time without us even knowing about them.

If this f’ing around impacts on KCD2 I ain’t going to be happy

Why does no one remember that Relic was the original developer of Homeworld?

If I were an investor, well 1. I'd stay far away from Embracer, but also 2. Lars still leading things would have me sprinting the other way.

Isn't this the group that basically got the equivalent of the average person being verbally told "a million dollar salary LOOKS certain" and then went and bought everything they could, and then the check never got written? If yes, I don't think it implies what they tried can't be done, just they did a horrible job trying to do it.

To the moon... To the drain...

Embracer is just the game industry version of a decades old problem. Somebody wanting to acquire huge things for ego, and a whole set of consultants and lawyers eager to charge fees for a huge merger. Long ago it was 'Bid 'em up Brucie' (Bruce Wasserstein) ruining Macy's. I am sure there are a bunch of lawyers and consultants who cleaned up on forming Embracer and don't have to give a dime back even though it never made any economic sense.

They just bought Asmode, the board game company that owns Fantasy Flight Games who had Star Wars Legion and X-wing minis and Twilight Imperium and many more.

They acquired more studios than they could afford, should have live within their means.

You mist two points 1. Those &friends names are placeholders (you showed it even in the screenshots at the bottom) and 2. that 900mio debt is shifted to the tabletop company the only profitable one. Probably so the other two are looking better for investors

I've got zero hope for Deus Ex now

So the 50 HQ people will be making 300 million SEK a year? ... that is 6 million (550k USD) per headcount.

well its good that all of these companies are still friends

What a cluster.

Is a self funded game company completely impossible? Like you never actually make money, you just tickle investors into fronting you more money?

What happens to the battlerfront classic collection in all this?

This is a truly excellent video. Such sass! I especially enjoyed the sponsor transition XD

Wait are they just splitting into branches with the embracer people being the overlords or are all three branches fully their own thing?

Oh Valheim is getting an update? Are they going to revert the changes to blocking in Hearth and Home update, or is it still terrible?

That's crazy, hopefully something new rises from this.

All I care about is what happens to Airship Syndicate...which I didn't hear, maybe just under THQ Nordic?

looks like a bunch of developers are looking for new gigs.

Hmm, yes, ~5 years, 'long term'.

Does he finally "address the elephant in the room" in this video?

The new company names may suck, but thankfully theyre just placeholders

Man, I hope Tripwire Interactive pulls through ok. The killing floor franchise is great. They've been pioneering a scaled back non predatory live service system for years, a la Helldiver's, but before it was cool.

rip Embracer, won't be missed.

How do you get 40% of the vote if you only own 20% of the group o.O

so this is the group that allowed to make aragon a black dude for their card game and turning lara croft into a "seeker of truth" because raiding tombs is too colonial?

I love how Company of Heroes doesn’t even get mentioned. That’s how shit of a job relic did with the third game.

How do youu guys put out news videos like this while missing the biggest part of the news, with Asmodee Group being settled with massive amounts of debt as part of this split? Definitely doesn't entice me to consider the main site for supporting.

I was under the impression the two billion dollar deal that fell through was capital for them to continue production. I'm sure not getting that contract put them in debt but exactly how far under are they?

"and friends" in the name is the most absurd thing lmao

What sucks for Asmodee is that Embracer foisted off 900M Euros in debt onto them.

A invest and a loan is not the same thing. Since the investment fell through now their on the hook for all those loans, it may sound callous but splitting up the liability into serval groups means that creators can only go after parts of the company rather then the whole thing. If you want to pretend Embracer is the worst thing ever angry creditors make embracer look like puppies.

Did we ever find out why the a Saudi dropped out at the 11th hour?

Now if only SBI didn't go under....

Game journalism and Kotaku were dead, but Bellular came to the rescue and helped them out.

Gee. Whoever could have seen this coming…

Asmodee may have been split off, but their assets were used as colateral for loans for Embracer Group. And the funds from those loans didn't go into Asmodee, so they just got a crippling amount of debt.

The fact that they shut down Volition before this

Just seems like another notch in the Year of Loss, just not one that is going to be readily apparent yet.

I really have no emotional connection to companies. They sell products. However, for some inexplicable reason I felt a moment of terrible grief when I saw Warhorse Studios as part of this entity. In my mind I had this fairytale of a few passionate people making a game out of sheer love, succeeding with it and being able to reap the rewards for themselves instead of having to be saddled with corporate overlords. What a shame.

I may have missed it, but where the hell is Piranha Bytes? Under THQ Nordic?

OMG Bellular, you needed to put a reference to the movie "Lars and the real girl". It's a movie about someone who has an "anatomically correct love doll" who he gets married to as a way of dealing with his sense of loss and mental health issues.

I'm really worried about all these small studios being drowned by debt

Their plan now seems to be passing the buck, or the debt. Sounds like corporate as usual.

I would say this is generally a good thing because it means the different tier of studios will be held to different expectations as to their ROI. It means Ghost Ship won't be forced to make a "pseudo-AAA" at some point in the future. Or whatever other crazy ideas happens.

I think it's quite apt to rename the Embrace of Death into Sauron And Friends

ESG has far too much connotation with the S and sometimes E components (Social and Environment). There's 0 measurement on Governance... are investors too self aware to judge projects on how they are run? Embracer should have long been a "do not touch" ESG investment on the G component alone.