Embracer Group cuts itself into pieces, this is its last resort: Bifurcation, new listing—licensing out Kain and JC Denton

Embracer Group! It’s the conglomerate you may recall from when it swallowed up seemingly half the industry a few years ago, before hitting a brick wall when a $2 billion mystery deal it had lined up vanished in a puff of smoke, leading to layoffs, sell-offs, and one stunned CEO at a press conference (don’t worry, he got better).

Well, now what remains of Embracer (which is still quite a lot of corporation) is undergoing binary fission—the company is splitting in two, spinning off its Fellowship Entertainment arm into its own publicly listed company to “further increase management focus to capture the full potential of the high-quality assets in the group and accelerate value creation.” And thank god. I was worried they weren’t going to do that.

Fellowship Entertainment is so-called because it’s the part of Embracer that handles everything Lord of the Rings, and the aliens who write corporate press releases say it “aims to become an IP-led entertainment company built for growth and enduring momentum, with some of the world’s most beloved franchises at its centre as the stewards of The Lord of the Rings and Tomb Raider intellectual properties.”

Fellowship will have a whole bunch of studios under its umbrella: “4A Games, Crystal Dynamics, Dambuster Studios, Dark Horse Media, Eidos-Montréal, Fishlabs, Flying Wild Hog Studios, Gunfire Games, Middle-earth Enterprises, Redoctane Games and Warhorse Studios” are going with it, says Embracer, and their various properties include “Darksiders, Dead Island, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Metro, Remnant, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, Tomb Raider, and many more.” They forgot the colon in Kingdom Come, there. Easily done.

The new company will try to both license out the many properties it holds—in both games and other forms of media—while at the same time creating and publishing stuff of its own.

As for the newer, svelter Embracer, that’s taking “Aspyr, Beamdog, CrazyLabs, Deca, Demiurge, DPI Merchandising, Limited Run Games, Milestone, PLAION Partners, PLAION Pictures, THQ Nordic (including 35 studios and subsidiaries), Tripwire and Vertigo Games” in the split. Its properties include “Arizona Sunshine, Biomutant, Destroy All Humans!, Desperados, Gothic, Killing Floor, Kingdom of Amalur, MX vs. ATV, REANIMAL, Ride, Screamer, Titan Quest, Wreckfest, and many more IPs, as well as licenses such as Hot Wheels Unleashed and SpongeBob SquarePants.”

In a separate letter to shareholders, Embracer head honcho Lars Wingefors expounded at length on how this move would, at the end of the day, make investors more money. Which is what you’d expect. But the more interesting part of his letter to mortals like you and me is this part: Wingefors says the company will be “more actively be exploring external partnership around our roster of other well-known IPs such as Saints Row, Legacy of Kain, Deus Ex, Red Faction, The Mask, Thief, TimeSplitters, amongst many others.”

We’ve already seen new Legacy of Kain stuff in the form of Soul Reaver and Defiance remasters (and an all-new game, Ascendance, which is best not spoken about), and Deus Ex sprung back to life with a remaster everyone made fun of so much it got indefinitely delayed.

A bit of a mixed record, then, on putting those properties to use, but perhaps “external” studios can do better. I’m open to see more. I’m a simple man: you offer me more Deus Ex, Legacy of Kain, and Saints Row (dare I hope we one day get a playable Saints Row 2 on PC?), I will at least be a little interested.

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