Embracer Group reveals licensing deal with 'several industry partners', structural changes
You've probably heard of Embracer Group before, and you may even know it as the proprietor of some of your favorite gaming intellectual properties, of which they own many. That's putting it lightly, but over the last several years it has been gobbling up development studios and IP left-and-right, seemingly with no end in sight.
Today, the Swedish gaming conglomerate revealed a number of news items in its latest financial reporting, as reported by Axios' Stephen Totilo. For starters – and this should come as a shock to literally no one – Dead Island 2 has been delayed from its February 3rd release date. It is now scheduled to launch on April 28th, as Nathan reported earlier. The other big, yet mysterious news is that Embracer has signed a six-year deal with several unannounced industry partners for what sounds like multiple licensed games. Embracer said the deal would produce big-budget titles:
“One result of such efforts to capitalize on the value we have created is a transformative partnership and licensing deal, that we have worked on with several industry partners. This deal covers a range of large-budget upcoming games over the next six years.”
The company also announced that Volition, the developer of Saints Row, has been moved under Gearbox and will now answer to them. The Saints Row reboot had a rocky launch (although Eric loved it in his review), but has sold one-million copies as of mid-October, according to Embracer, which said the following about the move:
“Financially, Saints Row has performed in line with management expectations in the quarter. Going forward, Volition will transition to become part of Gearbox which has all the tools, including an experienced management team in the US, to create future success at Volition. This is the first internal group transfer where we transfer a major studio between operative groups, but it is not necessarily the last."
In regard to its seemingly never-ending amount of developer and IP acquisitions, Embracer said we can expect those to finally slow down, and in fact, the company is undergoing an internal review into the feasibility of creating spin-off companies which would become their own publicly traded organizations.
And finally, Embracer revealed that it has a staggering 234 PC and console game projects expected out by April of 2026 from across its 96 internal game studios, with 25 of the projects being AAA in budget and scope.
