A piece of news significant enough that The Escapist itself published an article about it:
Embracer Group acquires Middle-earth Enterprises (Lord of the Rings IP), Limited Run Games, Tuxedo Labs, Singtrix, & Tripwire Interactive.
www.escapistmagazine.com
I don't know what they're planning, and I know too little about the business to make a qualified guess. That won't stop me though:
Earlier this year Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard making it the largest acquisition in gaming history. They broke the record set just a few weeks earlier when Take Two acquired Zynga. Apparently it is financially the right time to acquire studios now, whether to gain additional income or denying the competition the same opportunity or some other reason I don't know. Maybe every major group is trying to launch their own games-as-a-subscription-service which requires a whole lot of content? Embracer seems to mostly have b-tier franchises*, so I wonder if this actually can work out for them.
I also wonder if the pandemic meant that a lot more people spent money on video games in the last few years, so gaming companies have more cash to burn and a recent history of seeing video games being a good market performer, and this is why we see these acquisitions. Either that or only 1-2 company/ies see it this way and the rest are merely responding to the first one(s).
*not meant as an insult, meant as a descriptor of how popular their titles are. They call the 2-million seller
SnowRunner a
notable performer; nothing to scoff at but in terms of video gaming a bit weak.
