The CEO of Embracer Group, Lars Wingefors, has said that the decision to lose the Embracer name has nothing to do with the industry's negative perception of the brand.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, the exec insists that the decision to change his company's name once again was "strategic". This is part Embracer's move to split itself into three separate companies.
"Not at all," Wingefors said.
"These name changes are strategic decisions aimed at allowing each new entity to develop its own unique brand identity, tailored to its specific business focus and to maximize its potential in the market."
Wingefors also said that he is going to have much less involvement in decision-making at the three new companies, though he is still going to have a stake in these ventures.
"I would like the management teams of those businesses to form their own specific strategy in terms of how they operate their business, how they consolidate what games they make, how they monetize, and so on," Wingefors said.
"Being public is also a lot about communication, to communicate to stakeholders about what's going on and how the future looks and so on," he says, referring to the fact all three businesses will have their own listing on Nasdaq Stockholm. "When we started back in 2016, there were three people in the headquarters and it's been a journey to communicate the build-up of THQ Nordic first and then later Embracer Group, and today it's an enormous task and our quarterly report is very long and full of information.
"The more you disclose and tell, the more questions there are. So the management teams need to be mindful about how they communicate and why they are communicating. Ultimately, I want them to communicate first to gamers, and I don't think the public company setting is the right forum necessarily to communicate to consumers and gamers – or even to employees, even though we have used it to have a common platform to communicate what's going on across the group.
"The trust and value
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