Thick Thighs Save Lives
NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
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Embracer's restructuring program has cost over 900 people their jobs as of September 30 | They also mention "discontinuing a number of studios"
- Thread starter Thick Thighs Save Lives
- Start date
- News Business Game Dev
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Bitmap Frogs
Mr. Community
Very sad 
I hope everyone lands safely.
I hope everyone lands safely.
Denton
Member
MS has 143 billion cash on hand warchest and 2.7 trillion USD market cap.
Embracer has 0.36 billion cash on hand and 3 billion USD market cap.
MS can afford to keep running plenty of studios, even regardless of their success, for a long time.
Embracer will go out of business if they don't become leaner and more profitable soon.
Tiago Rodrigues
Member
You mean trying to buy an industry can be a bad idea? Damn…
BbMajor7th
Member
Watching an entire industry subsumed by greed, stupidity and moral condescension has been singularly depressing. Watching it happen with film has been no better.
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Robb
Gold Member
Sure, they can. I don’t think they will though. If studios under deliver I think they’ll cut the fat eventually by merging and/or closing them to make things more efficient/streamlined.
Heisenberg007
Gold Journalism
The "benefits" of acquisitions.
crackajack
Member
Sure they can. They could have also continued to sell Zune players and Nokia phones and give away Kinects for Xbones for free. But did not.
You don't become such a giant by running any part of the company like a welfare program.
Considering how Netflix, Disney, Spotify, DAZN are struggling the discussions in MS board meetings with its Xbox subscription push are imho probably already becoming quite heated especially with 2023 not really sticking the landing at all.
They don't have to follow Embracer immediately but if not finding more success soon, they probably will. I would have assumed Starfield will be the starting gun for their rise, but seems like ABK must do the job, again postponing more significant success into the future.
TheDreadLord
Member
I don’t agree. They brought back a lot of forgotten series. Their mistake was to grow too quickly and kinda just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks to it.
StereoVsn
Member
They also just left all studios mostly alone and didn’t try to take advantage of their size and properly consolidate and integrate acquired studios.
They have 12 freaking divisions and all studios are separate. That’s a lot of overhead in HR, procurement, finance and so on.
Hell, they could have proper company wide QA that would help all Studios and so on. Just buying stuff up and leaving it alone was always a strange proposition.
Little Chicken
Member
Embracer suck. We could see this a mile away after they started acquiring 4837383 studios.
Mibu no ookami
Demoted Member® Pro™
This is 100% what we're looking at with Microsoft and their unsustainable acquisitions.
Microsoft bought Nokia in 2013 for 7.2 billion dollars. They sold them in 2016 and 7,800 employees were laid off. They wrote off the losses and sold the business for 350 million dollars.
Microsoft is okay with the drag that Xbox is on the overall company, but they will have to make a decision as it relates to Xbox and Gaming.
I wish Microsoft was transparent when it comes to Xbox because we would have a better understanding of the trajectory of this, but I assure everyone here that this isn't sustainable.
Look at Toys for Bob, even multiplatform under ABK they were almost closed, and then they experienced massive layoffs and were essentially turned into a support studio for CoD. Why? Kotick saw more ROI in CoD support to make their annual releases than he did in Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. Phil is going to change that probably and put them back on Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, which means less support for CoD, but does it mean they won't do annual releases?
If they don't do annual releases their revenues will dwindle under Microsoft's leadership. If they maintain annual releases without the support, the quality will suffer and then the brand will decline, and so will revenue.
What happened with Nokia? The company was already struggling and then Microsoft made them exclusive to just Windows phones, which cratered their sales. Because there wasn't enough software support for Windows Mobile, no one was buying the phones.
Microsoft bought Nokia in 2013 for 7.2 billion dollars. They sold them in 2016 and 7,800 employees were laid off. They wrote off the losses and sold the business for 350 million dollars.
Microsoft is okay with the drag that Xbox is on the overall company, but they will have to make a decision as it relates to Xbox and Gaming.
I wish Microsoft was transparent when it comes to Xbox because we would have a better understanding of the trajectory of this, but I assure everyone here that this isn't sustainable.
Look at Toys for Bob, even multiplatform under ABK they were almost closed, and then they experienced massive layoffs and were essentially turned into a support studio for CoD. Why? Kotick saw more ROI in CoD support to make their annual releases than he did in Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. Phil is going to change that probably and put them back on Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, which means less support for CoD, but does it mean they won't do annual releases?
If they don't do annual releases their revenues will dwindle under Microsoft's leadership. If they maintain annual releases without the support, the quality will suffer and then the brand will decline, and so will revenue.
What happened with Nokia? The company was already struggling and then Microsoft made them exclusive to just Windows phones, which cratered their sales. Because there wasn't enough software support for Windows Mobile, no one was buying the phones.
GreenAlien
Member
Here is the full second quarter report in case anyone is interested..
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Phil didn’t buy with the intention of flipping to the Saudis.
The Cockatrice
Gold Member
Why is nobody suing them?
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
If you want to see how studios they own check out the wiki. I'm not even going to post it as it's so many it'll take up pages and pages. Who knows how many of these studios even make games or are active. Most of the studios dont even have a dedicated wiki link, which is something wiki posters will do for just about any company or game studio.
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
As of September 2023, Embracer Group has 129 internal game development studios and is engaging more than 15,000 employees and contracted employees in more than 40 countries
List of mergers and acquisitions by Embracer Group - Wikipedia
Embracer Group - Wikipedia
As of September 2023, Embracer Group has 129 internal game development studios and is engaging more than 15,000 employees and contracted employees in more than 40 countries
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SaucyJack
Member
Suing them for what, specifically?
The Cockatrice
Gold Member
Laundering money. Scamming small companies. You name it.
graywolf323
Member
can they afford to? sure, but did you somehow miss the massive amounts of layoffs Microsoft had throughout this year?
because they’ve clearly signaled with that where they could easily have afforded to keep those people that they don’t care & they will still trim what they consider the ‘fat’ as it were
DrFigs
Member
COD needs more devs working on it, not less, as evidenced by the sorry state of mw3. Phil is not going to move toys for bob from COD to work on franchises no one cares about.
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
True, but I dont think many of those big layoffs were gaming related.can they afford to? sure, but did you somehow miss the massive amounts of layoffs Microsoft had throughout this year?
Xbox as a whole since it came about 20 years is likely not very profitable at all. And even if it is, it definitely drags down MS's metrics as the company is server and software focused which are huge profits and profit margins.
Yet Xbox is still here.
poodaddy
Member
5%? So Embracer employs nearly 20000 people?! Jesus Christ dude, that's insane.
They grew way, way, way too fast. Incredibly amateur mistake. These layoffs are nowhere near done if that 5% estimation is correct, when all's said and done I wouldn't be surprised if this leads to over 5000 redundancies.
Grow slow folks.
They grew way, way, way too fast. Incredibly amateur mistake. These layoffs are nowhere near done if that 5% estimation is correct, when all's said and done I wouldn't be surprised if this leads to over 5000 redundancies.
Grow slow folks.
graywolf323
Member
I’m not saying they’ll get rid of Xbox but Microsoft’s size doesn’t mean the studios are safe
it did impact gaming, 343i & The Coalition were among the hardest hit (supposedly a quarter of 343i were laid off)
Xbox studios behind Starfield, Halo, and Gears of War have also been hit by layoffs
Members of several Xbox studios are included in the 10,000 being laid off at Microsoft.
www.windowscentral.com
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
In my Embracer links above, they did most of their studio acquisitions during covid. That was the worst time going forward. At that time it looked great as tech/gamin exploded and interest rates were rock bottom.
But since 2022, rates shot up and gaming normalized.
But now they are stuck from buying up a ton of studios.
My guess is during covid, a lot of their acquisitions came about because a lot of these smaller studios panicked not sure if they'll go belly up or not. They didnt spike usage and sales like big tech companies, so Embracer thought it'd be a slam dump scooping up small companies dirt cheap. Thats my guess at least.
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StereoVsn
Member
Microsoft layoffs came from highly profitable divisions including Support engineers from their M365 and Azure clouds. They cut freaking sales and support for their most money making sections and you think they won’t cut Xbox!?
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Kadve
Member
To recap:
Embracer has laid off 900 people, or ~5% in total this year
Electronic Arts cut 780 positions, or ~6% of their workforce earlier this year
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24008696/acastro_STK098_EA_01.jpg)
www.theverge.com
Unity also laid off 900 people (not sure how many they employ) with more likely to come.
filmstories.co.uk
And Epic let go of 830 people, ~16% of their worksforce
www.epicgames.com
And that's just the larger studios. 2023 hs not been a good year for gaming....
Funny thing is that it was still enough for stockholders to regain some trust in them. Their shares are back up again.
/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/CNRN4EMCM5M5VAIGCA7NS7Z3GI.jpg)
www.reuters.com
Embracer has laid off 900 people, or ~5% in total this year
Electronic Arts cut 780 positions, or ~6% of their workforce earlier this year
EA is laying off 6 percent of its workers
EA has become the latest tech company to issue layoffs.
www.theverge.com
Unity also laid off 900 people (not sure how many they employ) with more likely to come.
After shedding 900 staff this year, Unity says more layoffs are on the way
Unity's Q3 earnings report reveals the company is planning to lay off more employees and cut certain products.
filmstories.co.uk
And Epic let go of 830 people, ~16% of their worksforce
Layoffs at Epic
Earlier today Tim Sweeney sent the following email to Epic employees.
And that's just the larger studios. 2023 hs not been a good year for gaming....
Funny thing is that it was still enough for stockholders to regain some trust in them. Their shares are back up again.
Games group Embracer's shares soar as it tops Q2 profit forecast
Swedish games developer Embracer topped second-quarter operating profit expectations on Thursday, aided by its restructuring efforts, sending its shares up more than 11%.
www.reuters.com
SaucyJack
Member
Fraud and money laundering are criminal activities, you don't get “sued“ for those.
The Cockatrice
Gold Member
I think you should study the law more.
Denton
Member
Because they haven't done anything illegal?
Contrary to popular belief, people who sold companies to Embracer did so voluntarily.
The Cockatrice
Gold Member
Debatable, under what pretense I wonder? I doubt indies signed just so they could get their projects cancelled.
Denton
Member
Nothing debatable about it. You get an offer, you take it or leave it. If Embracer broke contracts, you can bet they would get sued.
The Cockatrice
Gold Member
Denton
Member
I mean we can debate baseless speculation until cows come home, you are right.
The Cockatrice
Gold Member
This thread is anything but baseless.
Denton
Member
Indeed, what's baseless is speculation that Embracer "scams indies" or "money launders". Let me know when there is any evidence for that, or someone sues Embracer at least.
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The Cockatrice
Gold Member
Buying large amounts of companies only to shortly cancel and fire its staff is hardly speculation. Even if the contracts were valid under a false pretense, as easily one can break a contract so can the law invalidate said contracts, if of course one would decide to sue them which was my first initial post. Simple as that. There is no evidence, it's all based on internet information, but its hard to not find all what Embracer did publicly in the last year shady, God knows what else went behind the scenes that we do not know.
SaucyJack
Member
Krappadizzle
Member
The Cockatrice
Gold Member
I think you should engage brain before posting.
PanzerCute
Member
These guys thought they had a 2b investment deal but nothing was set in stone at the time, but they still spent the money in advance.
The deal fell through and now they are in deep shit.
This has to be one of the worst cases of mismanagement in the industry.
I am sorry for the people who lose their job, obviously, but these twats at the top of the company are some gigantic morons and they deserve that.
The deal fell through and now they are in deep shit.
This has to be one of the worst cases of mismanagement in the industry.
I am sorry for the people who lose their job, obviously, but these twats at the top of the company are some gigantic morons and they deserve that.
Thick Thighs Save Lives
NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire
More info regarding the Embracer layoffs.
www.gamereactor.eu
Swedish gaming giant Embracer confirms laying off of 900 employees, shut down 15 games
Following a challenging year.
