Embracer Group is continuing to expand its ever-growing entertainment empire by unveiling another five studio acquisitions today, including Neverwinter and Star Trek Online developer Perfect World Entertainment and support studio Shiver Entertainment.
Gearbox Entertainment will be the operative group in charge of Perfect World Entertainment. The acquisition totalled $125 million, divided between cash and Embracer shares. Perfect World Entertainment also includes PWE Publishing and Cryptic Studios, both of which will be onboarded into Gearbox although they will operate independently. PWE Publishing is expected to strengthen Gearbox’s publishing division, while they expect Cryptic’s three long-running MMOs (Neverwinter, Star Trek Online and Champions Online) to continue to do well.
Meanwhile, Shiver Entertainment is one of two studios added to the Saber Interactive operative group. The studio is run by EA veterans John Schappert and Jason Andersen and specialises in supporting development and porting games to other platforms. However, they currently have projects of their own in development. The second studio is DIGIC, an animation studio based in Hungary. Their strengths lie in “commercial trailers and cinematics for best-selling game titles as well as animations for streaming media”. The latter studio will also help with projects in progress in other operative groups, namely Gearbox, THQ Nordic, Coffee Stain and Koch Media. None of the financial details for either of these acquisitions was made available.
Koch Media is the operative group that now has control over the fourth studio acquisition, Spotfilm Networx. This studio is the leading Advertising-based Video on Demand company in Germany and also has two Subscription Video on Demand channels. Both parties agreed not to disclose the financial details of this acquisition.
Finally, Embracer has also acquired Dark Horse Media, which will found an operative group all of its own. Dark Horse controls 300 IPs, including The Mask, Time Cop, Father’s Day, and Ghost. Embracer is hoping that some of the movie, TV and comic book IPs can be converted into video games for PC, console, VR and mobile. The financial details of this transaction were not disclosed due to commercial reasons.
