Another major acquisition has hit the gaming industry today that could affect the future of some well-loved titles. Beamdog, who are the developers of 2012s Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition and Planescape: Torment, have been bought by big spenders Embracer Group through one of their subsidiaries, Aspyr Media. Although the fee has been unconfirmed, expect it to be a huge deal, which is usually the case with these types of buyouts.
With Aspyr Media now owning Beamdog, it means they will operate as an independent studio within the group itself. Aspyr themselves were purchased by Embracer Group back in February 2021 and was then placed under the Saber Interactive umbrella. A company within a company, within a company, this is like the Inception of company buyouts.
Beamdog themselves have gained a little bit of a following since they were founded in 2009 by BioWare head operators Trent Oster and Cameron Tofer. They are known for their work on role-playing games that take inspiration from the Dungeons & Dragons model, with their Baldur’s Gate titles being some of their most well-loved games over the past few years.
Even with this acquisition, the company will still continue under the leadership of Oster due to his knowledge and expertise. They will work closely with Aspyr to develop new games, like the freshly announced role-playing game Mythforce, which will be released later this month on the Epic Games Store.
CEO of Aspyr Ted Staloch had his say on the new deal, “Beamdog is a tremendously talented group that we have admired for quite some time. Their development philosophy and the vision of the studio are perfectly aligned with ours”. Staloch went on to add, “We look forward to seeing them realize their ambition with new game Mythforce, whilst also maximizing the long-term potential of an incredible archive of classic games”. Well, someone is exciting it seems. Here’s hoping that this deal will be beneficial for all the parties involved, and none of that individuality gets lost.
