TheQ Nordic parent company Embracer Group has been quietly vacuuming up countless studios and IPs, become something of an invisible behemoth behind the video game industry curtain. While Embracer Group may not be a household name, it’s subsidiary groups are certainly well known in the video game industry. THQ Nordic itself owns a swath of popular developers and IPs, Saber Interactive has a major piece of the video game pie, and Embracer’s most recent acquisition was Gearbox—yes, of Borderlands fame. And all of that is still just a fraction of what Embracer owns, including Koch Media/Deep Silver.
That train of acquisitions doesn’t look set to stop anytime soon. Embracer Group recently raised $890 million in capital to finance additional acquisitions. They accomplished the funding through issuance of 6 million new Class B shares.
“We are delighted that the interest in Embracer Group has proven to be outstanding among both Swedish and international institutional investors,” Embracer Group CEO and Co-founder, Lars Wingefors said. “This capital injection[…]enables us to continue our strategy in welcoming more new great companies to the group.”
The company currently owns 59 individual studios across its subsidiaries, and more than 220 IPs, not including any new IPs that studios may be working on that aren’t public yet. Unless combined with other profits, the caliber of future acquisitions from this round of funding isn’t likely to match or exceed Gearbox, which was bought for $1.38 billion—more than this current financing amount. Though there are still plenty of mid-tier studios working on odd projects around the industry, which seems to be largely where Embracer’s interest lies if we’re looking at past acquisitions and their current portfolio. A large portion of Embracer’s acquisitions have taken place over the last few years.
Embracer Group recently revealed that they have over 150 games in development, more than 70 of which are premium titles expected to be released within the next financial year.
Who do you think Embracer will pick up next? Did you expect their acquisitions to continue following the Gearbox deal? Raise come capital to acquire the patience to make it to the comments down below and let us know.
