Embracer has officially sold Saber Interactive, to the tune of $ 247 million.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Saber’s buyer is Beacon Interactive. And Beacon’s head honcho is Matthew Karch, who also happens to be a co-founder of Saber. While Beacon and Saber were definitely different companies, what this amounts to is Karch moving to buy Saber out of Embracer.
The deal also allows Saber to bring several studios along with them. Those include Nimble Giant, 3D Realms, Sandbox Strategies, New World Interactive, Slipgate Ironworks, Mad Head Games, and Fractured Byte.
Beacon also gets an option to bring along two more studios; namely, 4A Games and Zen Studios. 4A Games has been making the Metro video game franchise thus far, but they won’t get to bring the IP with them. Metro’s IP rights will remain with Embracer via publisher Plaion. Beacon is expected to follow through in acquiring them, but we don’t know for sure at the moment.
Embracer has shared this statement about the sale:
“Due to commercial reasons the parties have agreed not to disclose full terms.
The Board of Embracer is, however, confident that the exercise price stipulated in the option right reflects at least the studios’ market value and is significantly higher than the current net book value (including goodwill) of USD 81 million.”
The terms of the sale also mean that several studios remain with Embracer. Namely, these are Tripwire Interactive, Beamdog, Tuxedo Labs, Demiurge, Shiver, Aspyr, Snapshot Games, and 34BigtThings.
This sale also allows Embracer to confirm that they no longer have any operations in Russia. While the announcement is unlikely to endear Embracer with gamers, given the wave of layoffs they are heavily involved in, this may be a favorable outcome for their future business dealings.
On Saber Interactive’s end, this will hopefully secure the future of all their studios and ongoing projects. As we had noted yesterday when Saber removed Embracer’s logos in their website, they had been doing better than most of the other studios under Embracer.
In particular, they still have the upcoming Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 to finally release this year. This will likely be Saber’s biggest release for 2024. After the long wait fans went through, it should be gratifying for Saber that they won’t have to share those sales with Embracer anymore.
We hope the best for Saber Interactive, and also the people at Embracer. Hopefully, Embracer can pursue similar moves in the future that can avert further layoffs, in favor of giving independence back to their studios.
