I fully expect that every project at this point under Embracer that isn't assuredly profitable or can at least break even will be canceled.
In April of 2021, Embracer's stock was worth 130 SEK.
Since then a few things have happened:
- Their stock has plummeted to 19.67 SEK... That's an 85 percent decrease in value
- In that same time period, the Swedish krona has fallen from 0.12 dollars to 0.092 dollars. To put in other terms 1 dollar used to buy about 9 krona and now it buys nearly 11.
The reason they're laying off staff is because they need to upright their profitability so that they don't have to close studios. Why are they closing studios instead of selling them? Because no one wants to buy them.
The COO leaving is just a precursor for their almost immediate future. People gave Square Enix shit for selling Crystal Dynamics and Eidos for 300 million, but they got out while the going was good.
People ignore that Square Enix bought Eidos for 130 million dollars and that included Crystal Dynamics. They sold for nearly 2.5x the value and Embracer almost certainly overpaid for them. Not sure why people thought these two studios were worth a billion dollars in the first place. We'll see how much Embracer can sell either studio for if they can at all, but I fully expect to see a fire sale across the board to put money into any projects that are viable.