231
Report: Embracer cancels Eidos' unannounced Deus Ex project, lays off staff
(www.gamedeveloper.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
231 points (97.9% liked)
Games
32494 readers
1575 users here now
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Weekly Threads:
Rules:
-
Submissions have to be related to games
-
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
-
No excessive self-promotion
-
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
-
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
-
No linking to piracy
More information about the community rules can be found here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It seems like the only time you hear about Embracer is when they are cancelling games or closing studios.
What even is their purpose?
There is a precise technical answer to your question a finance person can probably give you but it doesn’t really answer the question no matter how many acronyms they throw at you.
The actual answer is that there is no reason any of this has to be rational. Business people believe so strongly that companies like embracer are valuable and have a function in society that they detect zero cognitive dissonance when said companies don’t actually do anything but buy smaller companies, dissect them and destroy value.
You can’t understand business and finance people like they are scientists, they are closer to priests of a religious sect that believe in things because of their belief system not because of some rational framework that actually supports their ideas.
I think for the rich, it is just “good practice” to commit economic violence against smaller companies, it is good hygiene for keeping the power in the hands of the rich like mowing a field once a year or something. This doesn’t fully explain how poorly some of these companies function like embracer however.
Canceling games and closing studios.
Not so fast! Sometimes they also announce the return of old franchises, just to be shut down shortly after.
Like Timesplitters 4.
They're the holding company that used to be "thq"
Kind of like how Alphabet is to Google, or Meta is to Facebook and Instagram.
They supposedly should have an investment deal with a Saudi backed company. But failed last year https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/14/23831768/embracer-group-saudi-government-lord-of-the-rings-investment-deal-collapse
So they need a lot of cash now
Step 1. Amalgamate as many smaller studios as possible
Step 2. Probably some BS about tax writeoffs or packaging debt for sale
Step 3. Profit? (but not enough to pay anyone outside the C suite and maybe investors)