Saber Interactive CEO Pulls Back the Curtain on Joining, and Leaving Embracer
In the aftermath of Saber’s separation due to Embracer’s recent struggles, it might be easy to expect someone like Saber Interactive CEO (and owner, via holding company Beacon Interactive) Matthew Karch to be a bit gleeful, or even spiteful. But he’s not.
Speaking to IGN earlier this week, Karch comes off more content than anything. He says the departure was bittersweet, so while he’s satisfied with his decision, he’s also equally happy with the winding pathway he and Embracer took to get there. Karch tells me he has no regrets about being acquired by Embracer to begin with. “For the most part it turned out as I had imagined, at least for the first couple of years.”
We wind back the clock a little. In February of 2020, when Embracer acquired Saber for $525 million, the publisher was actively growing. It had just acquired Bigmoon Entertainment the previous October, and launched World War Z to major success. Karch says he and his fellow co-founder, Andrey Iones, knew they had two options. They could keep moving on their current path by making a World War Z 2 and acquiring even more licenses to make games with; or they could find a partner that would “be supportive of our ambitions to replicate what we thought we were successful at doing, and to find a way to increase the speed at which we could develop product and bring content to market.”
“And that's pretty much what's happened,” Karch says.
Embracer’s strategy at the time was, per Karch, one of acquisition. He compares the company to Pac-man “gobbling up everything on the screen.” But this was fully in line with Saber’s wishes, too. Under Embracer, Saber picked up Metro developer 4A Games, New World Interactive, 34BigThings, Mad Head Games, Nimble Giant Entertainment, Snapshot Games, 3D Realms, Slipgate Ironworks, SmartPhone Labs, Demiurge Studios, Fractured Byte, Bytext, DIGIC Pictures, Shiver Entertainment, and Zen Studios. It also briefly oversaw Aspyr, though Aspyr was acquired directly by Embracer itself.
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