The Embracer Group made a lot of acquisitions last year, including Gearbox, Crystal Dynamics, and The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit video game rights, but today the mystery partner has been revealed.
Embracer Group is a Swedish publishing company that proved during 2022, that they are willing to spend big bucks to acquire some serious game developers. The publisher purchased a myriad of developers and licenses in hopes of getting their Video Game publishing in a prominent state.
In May, a huge mega deal worth $2 billion fell through, and the mystery partner for the deal has not been revealed until today. The mystery partner was reportedly the Saudi government-funded Savvy Games Group (Reported by Axios). This blindsided The Embracer Group in May since the two parties reportedly had a ‘verbal agreement’ in place since October.
Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors said “All documentation was finalized and ready to go as of yesterday,” adding “We asked for the execution of the agreement before our Q4 announcement. However, late last night we received a negative outcome from the counterparty” regarding the broken deal. Due to the timing, Embracer Group effectively lowered their earnings forecast for the Q4 announcement, from a range of $965 million – $1.3 billion down to $655 million – $840 million in May.
Interestingly, the Savvy Games Group had previously invested $1 billion in the Embracer Group in June 2022, which makes the fallout of the deal even more puzzling. CEO Wingefors said at the time of the fallout that the deal made sense for both sides, so outside variables may have impacted the deal negatively outside of Embracer or Savvy themselves.
It’s important to note that neither Embracer nor Savvy Games have confirmed that Savvy was the other side of the $2 billion dollar deal, so it could be worth taking this news with a grain of salt until a formal announcement is made. Fans can also read about Embracer Group’s foray into comic books with their purchase of Dark Horse Comics here.
