Embracer expands with Gearbox and Aspyr -apkrig studios
The giant Embracer Group is growing again. The company announced that Gearbox Software, Easybrain and Aspyr studios are becoming part of it. Gearbox will operate as Embracer’s own standalone label, as will Easybrain, while Aspyr, which specializes in ports for Mac and iOS, will operate under the Saber Interactive label.
Gearbox
Gearbox Studio will continue to be run by its boss and founder Randy Pitchford. At the same time, he and other employees of the team will become shareholders in Embracer. Until now, it was an independent studio with two teams in Texas and Quebec. Gearbox employs over 550 people and the connection also includes brands such as Borderlands, Brothers in Arms, Duke Nukem or Homeworld. Gearbox also releases foreign games from independent studios – Hello Neighbor (2017), We Happy Few (2018), Risk of Rain 2 (2019) or Godfall (2020).
It is currently a $ 363 million deal, with approximately half of that amount paid out in shares. If Gearbox meets the agreed targets over the next six years, the total could rise by another $ 1 billion, with 360 million going to the stock and the remaining 655 million to be paid out in cash.
Aspyr
The kingdom of Embracer has also expanded to include Aspyr Media, now part of Saber Interactive. Aspyr has been operating since 1996 and specializes in porting video games. It is familiar to Mac users in particular, but gradually its activities have grown to PCs, consoles, mobile phones and tablets. The company works with many developers and publishers from around the world (such as 2K, Activision) and regularly portes games from the Star Wars universe, the Civilization, Call of Duty, SimCity series, but coincidentally also Gearbox games, with which it now finds itself under one roof.
Embracer paid $ 100 million for Aspyr, with $ 60 million in money and the remaining 40 in Embracer shares. An additional $ 350 million can be paid out to meet pre-agreed goals in the coming years. Half would be for stocks and half for cash.
Easybrain
Easybrain is probably the least known of Embracer’s current batch of catches, but it is a successful mobile developer specializing in logic games. His titles have climbed to more than 750 million installations and have 12 million active users daily across fifteen games. The company has branches in Cyprus and Belarus and employs over 230 people. Currently, the value of the deal is $ 640 million and can rise to another 125 million if Easybrain meets the agreed targets in the next six years.
Embracer said in a financial report last November after one of the giant acquisitions that it was negotiating a purchase with more than a hundred other companies, including some really large ones. Gearbox was undoubtedly one of them, but it didn’t have to be by far the last…
Embracer Group in the cube
If you feel that you are starting to get lost in the extensive portfolio of the Embracer Group, there is nothing to be ashamed of. The giant includes THQ Nordic, Koch Media and Deep Silver, and Tarsier, Coffee Stain, Dambuster, Fishlabs, Flying Wild Hog, Milestone, Volition, 4A Games, Bugbear Entertainment, Gunfire Games, Piranha Bytes and many more. You can find a complete list of them, for example, on Wikipedia. Czechs and Slovaks already have three teams in this hierarchy: Warhorse Studios in Prague, Ashborne Games in Brno and Nine Rocks Games in Bratislava. Embracer owns brands such as Alone in the Dark, AquaNox, Carmageddon, Darksiders, De Blob, Dead Island, Destroy All Humans !, Gothic, Homefront, Metro, Red Faction, Ride, Risen, Saints Row or TimeSplitters. Embracer already employs over 5,500 people worldwide and its studios are located in 40 countries.
