A Bloomberg report says that Swedish holding firm Embracer Group has reached a deal price as a lot as $500 million to promote its Saber Interactive division to a gaggle of personal buyers. The deal will make Saber Interactive a privately owned firm, in response to the report, with roughly 3,500 workers.
Embracer purchased Saber Interactive in 2020 on the peak of its acquisition spree. It was made the fifth working group beneath Embracer’s company construction and at present serves because the guardian of quite a few different studios together with 4A Video games, Aspyr, Beamdog, New World Interactive, Slipgate Ironworks, and Tripwire.
However Embracer bumped into bother in Might 2023 when an funding deal price $2 billion {dollars}, reportedly with Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Video games Group, fell via. Since then the corporate has laid off a whole lot of workers and closed a number of studios, in some circumstances—reminiscent of with Timesplitters studio Free Radical Design—after failing to search out potential new house owners.
Whereas no particular studios have been talked about, Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors hinted that offers have been within the works in its most up-to-date quarterly monetary report. “Embracer nonetheless has just a few bigger structured divestment processes ongoing that would strengthen our stability sheet and additional scale back capex [capital expenditure],” Wingefors mentioned. “Processes are in mature phases.”
Sadly, he additionally alluded to potential additional layoffs at firms that find yourself being bought off: “Sure firms would possibly provoke restructuring earlier than any divestment is introduced.”
Saber is at present working a few high-profile however seemingly struggling video games: A Knights of the Outdated Republic remake, which Bloomberg says continues to be in growth regardless of a dearth of data on it because it was “delayed indefinitely” in 2022, and Warhammer 40,000: House Marine 2, which in November 2023 was pushed into the second half of 2024, a delay that would probably be as much as a full yr.
Embracer can also be reportedly trying to promote a minimum of one different main studio, Gearbox, which it acquired in 2021 in a deal price as much as $1.3 billion. There’s been no public motion on that entrance, however Kotaku reported earlier right this moment {that a} sale is near being finalized.
It is not clear whether or not the Saber Interactive sale will embrace some or the entire studios it at present controls as a part of Embracer, though the Bloomberg report says the deal contains an choice for different studios to be part of the sale. Embracer and Saber Interactive declined to remark.