Saber Interactive, one of the subsidiaries of Embracer Group, revealed they have acquired three more studios: SmartPhone Labs, Demiurge Studios, and Fractured Byte. The Embracer conglomerate continues to look at adding more studios to their total too, with a “large number of ongoing discussions” taking place.
Saber Interactive already owns 16 studios across Europe and America. The first of their newest acquisitions, Demiurge Studios, is a US studio that used to be owned by SEGA Mobile. They’ve worked on dozens of free-to-play mobile titles and indie titles like Shoot Many Robots, but now focus on the AAA sector across multiple platforms. Previous collaborations include Titan Quest, Borderlands, Brothers in Arms, Mass Effect, and Medal of Honor: Airborne.
Fractured Byte is a Ukraine studio known mainly for porting to the Nintendo Switch. They’ve worked on Borderlands: The Legendary Collection and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2. Saber Interactive aims for the studio to help them with “internal and external game development projects”. Meanwhile, Smartphone Labs is based in Russia. Despite their name, they’ve worked on games for mobile, PC, consoles and VR, previously working with Saber to bring World War Z to Switch and Mudrunner to mobile platforms.
Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors revealed the company still has around SEK 8 billion ($916 million) in net cash and SEK 17 billion ($1.9 billion) in available cash for even more acquisitions in the future. He claimed “interest among entrepreneurs and creators to join the Embracer family is stronger than ever” and there’s a chance they may even be able to create new publishing or operating groups with these.
Wingefors concluded their financial report with his views on the current furor over unsavory working conditions that have been reported at several studios like Activision and Ubisoft. He said:
As recent times have shown, there are also other challenges in society and in our industry. It is important that we, as an industry, but also as individual companies and as a parent company, each take our responsibility to change these social structures of discrimination.
For Embracer Group our common foundation is our code of compliance, which aims to support inclusion, diversity, and gender equality. Furthermore, we trust that each company in our Group listen, discuss and act.
With so many studios seemingly clamoring to join their group, they must be doing something right.
