The open letter (which reads like someone poured a heap of investor briefs into a LLM) makes it sound like their plan the whole time was to acquire as many talented developers as possible, keep the very best and get rid of everyone else.

From now on, any indy studios are going to think long and hard before joining Embracer.

Future acquisitions by Embracer just got more difficult.

Kajetan wrote on Jun 13, 2023, 15:22:

RogueSix wrote on Jun 13, 2023, 13:17:
Aaaaannnnddd the Embracer bubble goes.... *ppppop*

There is no popping.

Yes, there is. Their M&A bubble and dreams of infinite growth has just popped big time .

No one here was talking about profitability but it should be very obvious that Wingefors is very concerned about their outlook. He called 2022 a challenging year and it certainly hasn't gotten any better yet. He is a smart guy by taking action now instead of waiting for the toilet to flush.

You don't take measures like this if everything is peachy. This is a huge restructuring and they are forming a taskforce with an interim COO and CSO to clean house. The mere fact that they are installing "interim" C-level people to do this tells you what is going to happen here.

These guys are going to take some drastic and very unpopular measures. They are "interim" because they will have to be complete assholes to everyone involved. As an Embracer studio lead, your ass is grass and they are the fucking grim reaper. That's how it is...

Braden wrote on Jun 13, 2023, 16:18:

Bent wrote on Jun 13, 2023, 13:37:
I wonder if the flopping of the Gollum game had anything to do with the implosion and failure of the deal.

If so, it'd be indirectly. Gollum was released by Nacon and they aren't part of Embracer.

However, Embracer just bought the IP rights to Lord of the Rings about a year ago. So, they just took a huge hit from that. On top of that big $2 billion deal falling through.

Putting most of one's eggs in one basket is always a risky decision.

Plus, for the last year, Embracer has been saying nonstop that Lord of the Rings will be the biggest franchise in history.

my favorite was the quote I saw from the investor call:

""We own Lord of the Rings, and we know we need to be exploiting Lord of the Rings in a very significant fashion and turning that into one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world," Karch said. "And that's obviously something we're going to be doing."

Get ready for a crap ton of crappy LotR themed games I bet.

SoloKingMonkey wrote on Jun 13, 2023, 12:32:
Graven will never leave early access.

Bullshit, its already nearing completing. Go look at the devs post and read the roadmaps.

Bent wrote on Jun 13, 2023, 13:37:
I wonder if the flopping of the Gollum game had anything to do with the implosion and failure of the deal.

If so, it'd be indirectly. Gollum was released by Nacon and they aren't part of Embracer.

RogueSix wrote on Jun 13, 2023, 13:17:
Aaaaannnnddd the Embracer bubble goes.... *ppppop*

There is no popping. Embracer is actually profitable. Those layoffs are just the usual kneejerk reaction of the board to dropping shares. And what did happen the moment Embracer announced those layoff? Share prices started to rise again.

Oh, FFS.

I wonder if the flopping of the Gollum game had anything to do with the implosion and failure of the deal.

It seems to be a real pattern with imploding publishers gobbling up my favorite smaller studios only to shut them down not long afterwards.

I suspect unethical enrichment is taking place through the shopping spree, with the primary goal being financial gain for the leaders through stock options.

Aaaaannnnddd the Embracer bubble goes.... *ppppop*

New business strategy: Throw less shit on the wall to see what sticks but still keep throwing. Shit.

Gotcha, Lars.

Graven will never leave early access.