The company has acquired the teams behind Borderlands, Deus Ex, and more
      • ampersandrew@kbin.social
        5·
        9 months ago

        Volition surprised me by staying open as long as it did. It hadn’t made a hit since Saints Row IV, and it had several high profile flops since then. I would have loved for Free Radical to finish making a type of FPS that doesn’t get made anymore, but apparently they spent two years of that studio’s life chasing Fortnite.

  • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
    111·
    9 months ago

    I would like to see investigations into embracer being opened for fraudulent acquisition of companies and IPs and therefore market manipulation. I‘m obviously not thinking they did commit a crime there but it should definitely be illegal. Or were all those companies on their last legs? I cant imagine they were.

    • Mkengine@feddit.de
      6·
      9 months ago

      I can’t give you an answer to the legality question, but some additional information I heard in a podcast: The acquisitions came at a time when money was cheap and people were playing a lot more video games because of the pandemic. Unfortunately, they miscalculated because money is now much more expensive again and the gaming industry has not been able to retain these players across the board. Only 4 games that have come out since then have brought in much more than the production costs, which then had to finance the remaining ~15 (all from my memory, but it should be in the order of magnitude). That didn’t work out and so now cuts have to be made to avoid burning even more money.

      If you understand German, I can send you a link to the podcast, if you’re interested.

      • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
        2·
        9 months ago

        Klar mach ruhig. ;)

        Thanks for clarifying though. I feel like this should still be illegal. As a CEO, you are expected to analyze and somehow predict what is gonna happen, by market observation, paying experts, etc. If your company goes bankrupt, you‘ll get investigated to see if you made obvious mistakes you shouldnt have made. Dont ask me where I know this from…

        In any case, embracer destroyed so many companies due to their foolishness, they should definitely get this treatment and get dismantled if they were acting reckless - which isnt a big stretch imo.

    • ImplyingImplications
      7·
      9 months ago

      I got a friend in game dev who was working on one of these games. It was an untitled generic open world survival crafting game.