After failing to close a $2 billion deal with Saudia Arabia’s Savvy Games Group, in June of last year, Embracer Group announced that it would be shuttering studios, cutting jobs, and cancelling games as part of significant internal restructuring program in order to get its finances back into shape. That restructuring program is now finally over, with Gearbox Entertainment’s sale to Take-Two Interactive for $460 million seemingly being the final major step of that process.
“We are ending the restructuring program now, end of March, and the Gearbox restructuring process has been part of that program,” said Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors during a recent investors briefing (transcription via Rock Paper Shotgun).
Interestingly, Wingefors added that though Embracer is continuing to be approached by companies looking to acquire “certain assets” owned by the group “on a weekly basis”, its remaining assets are no longer for sale.
“Now we are getting approached, I would say not quite daily, but on a weekly basis, by companies that would like to acquire certain assets within the group. And I’ve been very clear that they’re not for sale, because they’re a very important part for the group and for the shareholders of the group going forward.”
As per Wingefors, the companies that Embracer did sell – the aforementioned Gearbox, and prior to that, Saber Interactive – had “negative cashflow”.
Meanwhile, Wingefors has also said that Embracer doesn’t intend to go back to its previous spending spree of nonstop studio acquisitions.
“I think it’s way too early to start talking about restarting the M&A engines again,” he said. “Now we are in the late phases of the consideration into the future of the group, and that’s our highest focus and priority – how we set up ourselves and structure ourselves, and utilize our assets we have within the group, and have them work together, and how we leverage them better working together, utilizing different functions, I think that’s our focus right now, to increase profitability and cashflow generation, by simply making better products and games.”
As part of its restructuring program, Embracer Group cut over 1,400 jobs across all of its many owned studios, while some teams were shuttered entirely, including Saints Row developer Volition and TimeSplitters studio Free Radical Design. A total of 29 games were cancelled, including a new Deus Ex game by Eidos Montreal.