• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Reuters reports that Embracer Group is considering options for its U.S. game developer Gearbox Entertainment including a sale

Buggy Loop

Member
Microsoft be like...
oj simpson night GIF

I would prefer that than whatever the fucked happened to these studios after the buyout.

Microsoft, save Eidos please, k? Thanks
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Unless a company is desperate to sell itself at a bargain price and there arent various suitors lined up bidding them up in an acquisition, just about all acquisitions are overpriced. Just going by general theory that a company usually needs a +30% premium to their current market cap just to get them interested is already a warning sign. That doesn't mean it's not good long term value, but the short term it'll rarely be worth it. And long term that new acquisition has to perform as expected.

As for the company buying, unless they buy in cash or stock swap, they'll go into debt to finance it because they dont have enough on them to buy out all the shares with what they got. So they go into debt like a car loan. And with interests rates sky high, any loan for anything in life will be a lot.

Thats why when interest rates go sky high a lot of tech companies crash and burn. They got hardly anything going, hardly any sales and profit (lots lose money) and their loans (and loan renewals) will be high costs.
 
Last edited:

intbal

Member
Gamestop should buy them.
Maybe then they'd have an actual product to sell to people.
Also, they should rebrand the parent company to Gearbox since Gamestop is one of the most hated names in all of gaming.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
No one is interested in overpaying for these studios.

Imagine buying something that is worth 10,000 dollars for 25,000 dollars only for the value of that to drop to below 5,000 dollars... And you're paying to keep it.
To me, gaming is an industry where if a big company wants to buy a studio you either scope it out and buy up dirt cheap indie studios who can make good games (and if they crash who cares it was a tiny studio) or buy up proven giants that already make tons of money with a rock solid gamer base.

How Gearbox is worth $1.4 billion in 2021 who they hell knows.

In June Embracer's announced a restructuring to reduce its net debt to less than SEK 10 billion ($903 million) by the end of its financial year from SEK 16.7 billion at the end of June. The plans, which include studio closures, cancelled projects and layoffs, follows what CEO Lars Wingefors described as a "challenging year" for the company.
What happened was embracer was buying up everyone when interest rates were in the toilet. The past year and a half, rates have skyrocketed. So it's coming due to loan renewal time and Embracer is panicking because the loan rates will probably be triple what they were during covid and before that.
 
Last edited:

small_law

Member
Any thoughts that one of the big guys like Amazon, Facebook might just casually pick up the whole shebang?
If it was 10 years ago, maybe, but tech giants are much more gunshy these days about getting into areas that aren't within their core competencies. They want to develop new shit, create a market for it themselves, and have it blow up rather than get into markets and compete with established players.

Media is real dicey right now across the board. Tastes and preferences are all over the place.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Any thoughts that one of the big guys like Amazon, Facebook might just casually pick up the whole shebang?

Time's not right I think. My opinion has always been that Embracer's plan is to float a huge raft of IP such that they can get a favourable bargaining position with any suitor in the digital streaming future. The problem is that they've over-extended themselves before that target market has matured sufficiently (i.e. become dominant) for them to get the return they desire.

As it stands they are running a model pretty much interchangeable with all the big European publishers that went bust in the 2000's. The economics just don't really work anymore because games -even of the AA variety- take too long and cost too much to make.

So they are going to quietly shutter studios that have no proven IP, and sell off those that do in order to right the ship and hopefully start the cycle over.
 
To me, gaming is an industry where if a big company wants to buy a studio you either scope it out and buy up dirt cheap indie studios who can make good games (and if they crash who cares it was a tiny studio) or buy up proven giants that already make tons of money with a rock solid gamer base.

How Gearbox is worth $1.4 billion in 2021 who they hell knows.


What happened was embracer was buying up everyone when interest rates were in the toilet. The past year and a half, rates have skyrocketed. So it's coming due to loan renewal time and Embracer is panicking because the loan rates will probably be triple what they were during covid and before that.

I always (and mostly wrongly) compare every purchase to Insomniac, which Sony got for a song. I have to wonder if the studio was in major debt., which is possible after the underperformance of several games.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Looking at their wiki of games made and published, Gearbox is basically a company now that releases a Borderlands inspired game here and there, and some junk nobody plays.

I dont think they are even worth $500M. How Embracer paid $1.4B in 2021 after they released Godfall in 2020 who knows.
 

Chukhopops

Member
Looking at their wiki of games made and published, Gearbox is basically a company now that releases a Borderlands inspired game here and there, and some junk nobody plays.

I dont think they are even worth $500M. How Embracer paid $1.4B in 2021 after they released Godfall in 2020 who knows.
What’s weird is that their last game sold really well apparently:


Godfall was most likely a flop but I’m sure there are other deadweight devs in the Embracer portfolio. Also makes me worried about Homeworld 3 between this and the BBI layoffs…
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
As for any suitors interested in buying Gearbox, it basically comes down to what Borderlands is worth. The rest of the games they make are throw ins.
 
As for any suitors interested in buying Gearbox, it basically comes down to what Borderlands is worth. The rest of the games they make are throw ins.

Well it comes down to buying a studio for an IP that isn't at all consistent. Is it worth taking on 1300 employees for the franchise AND buying the studio and IP?

Would probably be cheaper to buy the IP and a core group. No one wants to take on 1300 employees in today's environment.
 
As for any suitors interested in buying Gearbox, it basically comes down to what Borderlands is worth. The rest of the games they make are throw ins.
Problem is the publishing agreement with 2K. I guess someone like a Microsoft could agree to continue to let 2K publish until the agreement is done as long as Borderlands comes to Game Pass. It's not an awful thing if so.
 

jayj

Banned
It seems like the only thing Embracer is good at is ruining studios and destroying the value of whatever properties they acquire.

Gearbox used to be a great name in the business, not anymore. Any talent they had is probably long gone, and what remains isn't what it used to be. Any associated IP's would be the only thing valuable to anyone willing to buy.
 

diffusionx

Gold Member
What is the AAA IP are you referring to?
Borderlands, obviously. It sells extremely well (B3 sold ~18 million) and has a long tail.

I always (and mostly wrongly) compare every purchase to Insomniac, which Sony got for a song. I have to wonder if the studio was in major debt., which is possible after the underperformance of several games.
I think the big difference between Gearbox and Insomniac is the IP. Name on the building is irrelevant, devs come and go, but having actual properties is really valuable.
 
Last edited:

BbMajor7th

Member
Phili Spencer right now:

Floyd Mayweather Sport GIF by SHOWTIME Sports


Kotaku in two years:

Xbox Calls Borderlands 4 ‘One Of The Most Important Shooters Ever Made’ And It’s Not Even Out

Microsoft doesn’t get to decide if Borderlands 4 is important. Players do.

By Kenneth Shepard | Published June 13, 2025 | Comments (26)
 

SodaZA

Member
I suspect 2K is going to gobble up gearbox, I'm more curious to see who's going snatch up the Tolkien IPs when they go up got sale
 

feynoob

Banned
I always (and mostly wrongly) compare every purchase to Insomniac, which Sony got for a song. I have to wonder if the studio was in major debt., which is possible after the underperformance of several games.
Insomniac had spiderman from Sony and a great engine from sunset overdrive.
Sony got extremely lucky that MS funded insomniac project.
 
I think T2 is the most optimal buyer (due to Borderlands IP), but I don't see them paying 1b+ for Gearbox. They did not want to pay for Codemasters for example. Maybe Borderlands worth more for them, but I am not sure.
 
Last edited:

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Insomniac had spiderman from Sony and a great engine from sunset overdrive.
Sony got extremely lucky that MS funded insomniac project.

More like Insomniac realized that all their success was on Sony platforms, and getting the Spiderman license they were securing the studio (and its employees) future for the next decade.
 
Borderlands, obviously. It sells extremely well (B3 sold ~18 million) and has a long tail.


I think the big difference between Gearbox and Insomniac is the IP. Name on the building is irrelevant, devs come and go, but having actual properties is really valuable.
devs come and go, but established infrastructure, culture, pipeline, limited tech debt... all very important...

Borderlands is almost always available for free on a multitude of platforms.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Goolging it, Embracer had a falling out where there was going to be some kind of partnership or sale of stuff worth $2B. It never happened. So now they got around $1B US in debt trying to get rid of.

They're like a house flipper hoarding properties assuming buyers will come by and take them off their hands to bank profit. The mortgages cost sky high and they got no big deals, so they need to dump them.
 
Last edited:

CamHostage

Member
Embracer always seemed like a disaster waiting to happen, but I hate that it happened. They were one of the few old-school "Let's just make a lot of games!" publishers out there, and they were buying up IP and developers in genres that other publishers had abandoned but that niches of gamers still enjoyed. And these development studios needed a parent publisher, not every studio can operate as an indie. If Embracer had just been able to keep cranking out a slew of 7s forever and making money on the full slate of game interests, that would have been pleasant.

(I can't believe I'm defending the shit-shoveling THQ publishing model, but now that it's gone I miss the stuff I liked to be found among the garbage.)
 
Last edited:
Gearbox is likely worth 1 billion or so dollars.
Even at that price I dont think MS would be interested.

Borderlands, Homeworld and Brothers in Arms are pretty much the only titles they own that are worth anything.

If anyone is gonna be interested it would like be Take-Two as they already have a good working relationship.
I could seriously see Xbox adopting Brothers in Arms as a first party FPS title. It would honestly be so sick. But of course I wish Sony would do that haha.
 
Top Bottom