Few companies in the video game sector have been talked about more recently than Embracer Group, especially throughout the year 2023 and so far in 2024 and mainly for the worse. And this is supposed to be one of the reasons (although of course not the only one) of this important restructuring, which may ultimately have great consequences for the huge number of titles that are part of its catalog.

If you’re not familiar with Embracer Group, you should know that we’re talking about what we used to know as THQ Nordic, which Starting in 2019, the process of disproportionate growth began, based primarily on the purchase of studies of all types. She was engaged in this process until the end of 2022, at a time when the company made huge economic investments to realize these investments and undoubtedly waited for a large and quick return.

This, as could easily be predicted, did not happen In 2023, a contraction comparable to the expansion of previous years begana process where some studios were lucky, bought by other investors, but others were less lucky and were forced to close or at least restructure, i.e. layoffs, cancel projects and above all. , a huge storm of uncertainty about everything related to their studies.

Their situation has been hard to sustain lately, and thankfully it looks like they’ve decided to put in the work to fix it. So as we read in his official statement, Embracer Group is about to restructure, to split into three independent companies that will share the group’s entire catalog. This distribution aims to organize all these assets in an orderly and understandable way, and also makes it easier for each of the resulting companies to focus on a specific type of management.

The three companies resulting from the split will be as follows, although the names of the second and third are not final:

• The Asmodee group
• Coffee Stain and Friends
• Enterprises and Friends of Middle-earth

the first of them, Asmodeus, retains all board and card game assets, both physical and digital. Although this part of the division may seem smaller, Asmodee has an important catalog with some titles that are highly recognized by the ever-growing community of players who enjoy this type of design, whether in a family setting, with friends, etc.

Coffee Stain and Friends goes by the (temporary, I remember) name of Coffee Stain Studios, the indie studio responsible for titles like the wonderful Goat Simulator saga and the sensational Satisfactory. And the choice of the name of this studio to identify this resulting from the division seems very appropriate to me, because it is the one that will preserve the indie games, A and double A, as well as the free ones for all platforms.

The Embracer Group, for its part, will also change its name (it is temporarily identified as Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends), and you must have already come to the conclusion by default what its assets will be. Indeed, the triple A of the house will be concentrated here, in addition to another very important asset, the intellectual property rights of Lord of the Rings and Tomb Raider. Of the latter, let’s recall that Crystal Dynamics, acquired by the Embracer Group in 2022, has been developing a new title in the Lara Croft saga since the same year.

This reorganization provides at least a certain organizational sense, allowing each of the resulting companies to focus on managing a specific type of asset, which should help narrow the scope a bit. We will now have to wait and see if the fallout from this Embracer Group division marks the end of the bleeding that the group has been suffering for over a year. And of course, let’s cross our fingers that all the intellectual property in the form of games, which is so important to many, survives.