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News Report: Embracer has made layoffs at Gearbox Publishing

Brofield said:
This is just the first of the Embracer studios getting shuttered, a lot more bad news to come in the months if not weeks ahead. Hell, might only be the first announcement today.

Fuck Embracer's reckless acquisitions, and fuck industry consolidation.
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Derachi said:
my opinion remains unchanged
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Seconded (also posting right after you the second time lol)
 
I guess the Volition shutdown and these layoffs are only the beginning. Hopefully everyone manages to find new employment soon.
 
Something tells me things are gonna get uglier from here. Not too familiar with Embracer, but this is a hell of a bad omen.
 
Embracer Group trying to be a video games company:

IMG-0502.png
 
Rich guy buys a bunch of IPs and studios he liked playing and then realizes he doesn't know how to run a gaming company and starts closing them.
 
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Blows my mind that Embracer has over 16k employees. Nearly four times as many as three years ago.
 
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Brofield said:
It's not even gaming developers they're fucking over, they also acquired Dark Horse comics so they're just as likely to be on the chopping block
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They also own Asmodee which is a sizable swathe of the board gaming industry, I think second to Hasbro in size after they went on their own buying spree years ago before being bought up by Embracer.

The shenanigans with Embracer have to potential to create ripple effects that are going to be felt for years, if not decades, much like the Cendant scandal that ultimately resulted in Activision-Blizzard because all the Cendant holdings like Blizzard and Sierra were bundled together and sold off to Havas and then Vivendi.
 
"We're totally gonna secure that 2 billions dollars deal with MBS, guys ! Keep buying things !"
- Genius, Embracer Group.

Sucks for Gearbox. Maybe, just maybe, Randy Pitchford can make a good decision in his life to save his company & employees.
Maybe.
 
shoptroll said:
They also own Asmodee which is a sizable swathe of the board gaming industry, I think second to Hasbro in size after they went on their own buying spree years ago before being bought up by Embracer.

The shenanigans with Embracer have to potential to create ripple effects that are going to be felt for years, if not decades, much like the Cendant scandal that ultimately resulted in Activision-Blizzard because all the Cendant holdings like Blizzard and Sierra were bundled together and sold off to Havas and then Vivendi.
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Yeah, if you actually go down the list of companies and IPs that were bought up by Embracer over the last few years your head would start to spin. It's not giving me quite "sinking ship" vibes yet but apparently every segment is going to be affected.
 
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So, did they sell off the rights to the Tolkien works or just license them?
 
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Someone has to buy them out as the management is incompetent as hell. They still haven't formed anything out of recent Eidos acquisitions and I'm guessing that's because the whole company is run by unqualified people. Somebody has to clean up this mess. Tencent? Netease? Embracer as a whole is not that expensive.
 
Koren Lesthe said:
"We're totally gonna secure that 2 billions dollars deal with MBS, guys ! Keep buying things !"
- Genius, Embracer Group.

Sucks for Gearbox. Maybe, just maybe, Randy Pitchford can make a good decision in his life to save his company & employees.
Maybe.
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I don’t think randy is at gearbox anymore
 
9-Volt said:
Someone has to buy them out as the management is incompetent as hell. They still haven't formed anything out of recent Eidos acquisitions and I'm guessing that's because the whole company is run by unqualified people. Somebody has to clean up this mess. Tencent? Netease? Embracer as a whole is not that expensive.
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You'd have to be dumber than the people currently running Embracer to buy Embracer as it is.
 
Dardan Sandiego said:
You'd have to be dumber than the people currently running Embracer to buy Embracer as it is.
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Yeah, we have a lot of dumb people with billions on this planet. Something like Embracer could find a buyer quick if put on sale.

But of course, potential buyers won't keep Embracer as it is. Dumb billionaires can find smart people with actual ability to run a company unlike current heads of Embracer.
 
9-Volt said:
Yeah, we have a lot of dumb people with billions on this planet. Something like Embracer could find a buyer quick if put on sale.

But of course, potential buyers won't keep Embracer as it is. Dumb billionaires can find smart people with actual ability to run a company unlike current heads of Embracer.
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They couldn't even find a buyer for Volition and you think they could find someone willing to take on a behemoth of this size?
 
Hopefully they'll give some more studios and companies the opportunity to divest.
 
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Dardan Sandiego said:
They couldn't even find a buyer for Volition and you think they could find someone willing to take on a behemoth of this size?
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It's not a behemoth actually, Embracer's current market cap is only €3 billion. Someone can acquire them for double that amount, or even cheaper if Embracer continues these stupid acts. It's gonna be a quite a deal to get so many good studios for such low price when Embracer goes into bigger debt.

I don't think they even considered to sell Volition, or do anything else with them. As I said, these are unqualified people, they just punished the studio after their first mistake in years. I doubt they have any plans for reconstruction moving forward.
 
9-Volt said:
I don't think they even considered to sell Volition, or do anything else with them. As I said, these are unqualified people, they just punished the studio after their first mistake in years. I doubt they have any plans for reconstruction moving forward.
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“We’ve got the IP, screw the talent”
 
9-Volt said:
It's not a behemoth actually, Embracer's current market cap is only €3 billion. Someone can acquire them for double that amount, or even cheaper if Embracer continues these stupid acts. It's gonna be a quite a deal to get so many good studios for such low price when Embracer goes into bigger debt.

I don't think they even considered to sell Volition, or do anything else with them. As I said, these are unqualified people, they just punished the studio after their first mistake in years. I doubt they have any plans for reconstruction moving forward.
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It's not about their valuation but the massive overhead that has accrued through their reckless expansion. The same overhead they are now trying to eliminate by reorganizing the company. Nobody in the business of making money is going to take that on.
 
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Lugia667 said:
how the fuck did they get so bloated?
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Lack of regulatory oversight, corporate greed, no one who has authority caring what they did (and let's be honest, still don't), probably some other mystery factors involved, take your pick
 
9-Volt said:
It's not a behemoth actually, Embracer's current market cap is only €3 billion. Someone can acquire them for double that amount, or even cheaper if Embracer continues these stupid acts. It's gonna be a quite a deal to get so many good studios for such low price when Embracer goes into bigger debt.

I don't think they even considered to sell Volition, or do anything else with them. As I said, these are unqualified people, they just punished the studio after their first mistake in years. I doubt they have any plans for reconstruction moving forward.
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Volition is actually on its second mistake and Agents of Mayhem would have probably shut them down if Embracer didn't purchase Koch Media soon after. It bombed really bad as opposed to Saints Row which only failed to break even. It's been 8 and 1/2 years since Gat out of Hell which was a moderate success at best. It's a Bioware situation but Embracer doesn't have the easy cash from FIFA to offset Volition not being a breadwinner. Volition isn't a huge surprise after the $2 billion deal didn't go through but, it still sucks. Layoffs at Gearbox feel like they want to trim at the company they felt they overpaid the most for.

With Embracer finally having releases that aren't remakes or remasters, we can see that they were trying to pivot around this time but ran out of investment money and so have to make cuts. Purchases like Dark Horse, Asmodee and Middle Earth feel like they are trying to be a much bigger company than they actually are and dipping into the licensing industry
 
Yeah my opinion on Embracer just being a group of hyper capitalists only interested on inflating their company's worth to suit their own bank accounts and gutting everything they lay their hands on hasn't changed much. Gearbox are responsible for a multi-million selling series which has a film coming. All being above board, there's no way they should be on the chopping block.
 
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Hailinel said:
There was a time when people on forums actually cheered for these Embracer idiots (and some still do).

Acquisition Brainrot is terminal.
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Some of the initial hype for Embracer, when it was still called THQ Nordic, wasn't completely unjustified.

At least from an outsider's perspective it looked like they were investing heavily in AA-games and quality rereleases of legacy games. It wasn't until 2019 when the 8chan incident happened that people started side eyeing them but even that was judged as a momentary lapse by most. Then they got renamed to Embracer and it was all downhill from there lol.
 
I understand that the last two Volition games weren’t of the highest quality (even though I feel like Saints Row 2022 was criticized for a lot of wrong reasons), the studio seemed to suffer for a lack of real leadership, but hearing them being shut down hurts a bit. I still think that Saints Row: The Third is one of the best, and definitely the best written, GTA-like ever made. Hope that the devs will be able to find a more stable and welcoming home.
 
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