Report: Embracer closing in on sales of Saber Interactive and Gearbox

thesixthaxis.com:

Embracer is closing in on sales of Saber Interactive and Gearbox, it’s reported, with the company looking to shed two of its most noteworthy acquisitions of the last few years in an effort to dig itself out of a financial hole.

The latest news, per Bloomberg, is that Saber Interactive is set to be sold to an investment group in a deal worth up to $500 million – that’s less than the $525 million they paid for the studio in 2020. However, this will have an outsized impact on Embracer’s overall wage bill, as Saber has ballooned in size through acquiring studios like Metro developer 4A Games over the past few years, and has grown to have around 3,500 employees. The sad thing is that this is coming now and not before this part of Embracer had been hit by previous waves of layoffs that have, to date, seen 1,387 employees made lose their jobs in the last two quarters.

Saber Interactive themselves are best known in recent times for the MudRunner series and World War Z, but have big hopes for blockbusting releases with Space Marine 2, Jurassic Park: Survival and others. 4A Games recently announced the VR game Metro Awakening, and Aspyr’s Star Wars remastering efforts are bringing back the classic Battlefront games this month. The Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake also remains on Saber’s books, though development of that has been quite tumultuous.

Elsewhere, there’s reports that the mooted sale of Gearbox is also entering its final stages, though it’s not clear who a buyer is just yet. Originally acquired in a deal valued at $1.3 billion in 2021, Gearbox also ballooned in size as its publishing efforts expanded and studios were brought in under that label. The company headcount leapt from around 600 in April 2021 to 1,300 just a year later thanks to adding Lost Boys Interactive, who had supported Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands during development, absorbing Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic Studios as they were acquired, and Eidos Shanghai (now Gearbox Studio