The Embracer Group has just affirmed its commitment to video game preservation with the announcement of the Embracer Games Archive, a specialist initiative dedicated to the curation and care of video games, consoles and accessories. Located in Karlstad, Sweden, the vault archive is already looking pretty well-stocked, with an apparent 50,000 games, consoles and accessories in place.
The Embracer Group is fast becoming a titan in the world of gaming, what with its most recent acquisitions being Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montreal and Square Enix Montreal. These studio acquisitions marked the latest string in the Embracer Group’s proverbial bow after previous deals have seen them snap up Gearbox, Aspyr Media, THQ Nordic and other notable studios. The new archive is intended as a means of safeguarding video games culture and creating a global foundation for future video games research. According to an update shared on the Embracer Group website, the driving goal behind the initiative is to “archive and save as much of the video games industry as possible.”
While the current collection of games isn’t globally-oriented, the long-term goal is to curate a library of games, consoles and accessories from across the world. In terms of games, in particular, the archive will be initially focused on Nordic editions with English text or other European editions with English text, but the long-term goal will be to include North American and Japanese editions of games.
The current collection is currently not open to the public but this is something that the Embracer Group plan to work on in time, after developing the content of the archive further and building a database that researchers, museums, other initiatives and journalists can access in future.
You can find out more about the Embracer Games Archive, including how to contribute to it if you’d like to, over at the official website.
