Embracer Group to acquire Crystal Dynamics, Square Enix Montréal, Eidos-Montréal and Plus IPs for $300 million

The Embracer Group, the Swedish video game holding company and parent company of Gearbox, Saber Interactive and THQ Nordic (among many others), has entered into an agreement to acquire several studios and select IP from Square Enix.

The deal includes three studios – Crystal Dynamics, Square Enix Montréal and Eidos-Montréal – as well as an IP and gaming catalog including Tomb riderAnd The former godAnd thiefAnd kenya heritage More than 50 “background catalog” titles. The acquisition will involve more than 1,100 employees across the three studios, for a combined total purchase price of $300 million.

The news was published via a press release issued by the two companies. Embracer expects the transaction to close “during the second quarter of Embracer’s fiscal year 22/23 (July-September 2022)”.

Square Enix states in Her press release That “the deal enables the launch of new businesses by moving forward with investments in areas including blockchain, artificial intelligence and cloud.” The Japanese company also says that it will “continue to publish franchises such as Just a reasonAnd OutridersAnd life is strange“.

After this deal closes, the US will be Embracer’s No. 1 country by number of game developers and Canada will be No. 2. In total, after the pending closings, Embracer will have more than 14,000 employees, 10,000 participating game developers, and 124 in-house studios. Embracer’s upcoming content pipeline includes over 230 games with over 30 AAA games. This acquisition will increase the size of Embracer’s existing AAA chip, and Embracer will have one of the largest pipelines of PC/console game content across the industry, across all genres.

This is the latest in a series of high profile acquisitions in the video game industry, with Microsoft making a process $68.7 billion acquisition From Activision Blizzard, after picking up Bethesda and its IP address in 2020.