In its financial report on its 2024 fiscal year, the Embracer Group has shared its intentions to put out over 70 projects across its PC, console, mobile, and tabletop gaming divisions within the 2025 fiscal year. This comes after restructuring efforts that began last June, which led to mass layoffs and some studios being sold off or shut down.
The report was published on the Embracer Group’s website on May 23, which reveals that net sales were overall an improvement compared to the previous fiscal year, having increased by 12%. As for the 2025 fiscal year (which covers April 2024 to March 2025), Embracer says there is plenty of potential growth for its various gaming divisions, particularly for tabletop and mobile. Over 70 gaming related projects are expected to launch by the end of next March, which includes “three important unannounced titles.”
Embracer obviously doesn’t comment further on what those three are, but it does name two key releases it has scheduled: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and Killing Floor 3. Both games will launch for consoles and PC though only the former has a launch window of 2024, so the latter may not release till early 2025. Embracer also believes these two games will perform similarly to 2023’s Dead Island 2 (which sold over 2 million copies in its first month) and Remnant 2 (which sold over 2 million copies in its first two months).
While there’s optimism for the future, with Embracer planning to dedicate a lot of resources towards the many, many IPs it owns (particularly The Lord of the Rings), CEO Lars Wingefors does acknowledge the layoffs. Around this time last year, the company employed 16,601 people, but that number has dropped to 12,069. That means 4,532 employees were let go in the past 12 months, which is a reduction of roughly 27%. “These were necessary but difficult decisions, and it has been important to carry out the changes with compassion, respect and integrity towards those affected,” says Wingefors. He also says the restructuring efforts are now over, and have “created a stronger foundation for improved profitability, cash flows and long-term value creation.”
The games industry has a whole has been suffering from severe layoffs, but Embracer in particular has closed several of its studios, such as Free Radical. That one especially hurt since Embracer had helped in reforming it to revive Free Radical’s Timesplitters series, only to close it before we even got to see what the studio was cooking. Embracer also sold off Borderlands developer Gearbox (less than three years after it was bought out) and Saber Interactive, with the latter still planning to release a remake of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
Embracer’s rapid growth and subsequent downsizing has made it a popular target of criticism, but soon the name Embracer Group won’t be a thing anymore. The company is splitting itself into three separate entities, and none of them will bear the Embracer moniker. Hopefully, there’ll be no further layoffs out of Embracer, but Microsoft’s closure of Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks has proved studios can make successful games and still be shut down.
Published: May 23, 2024 06:58 am