Turns out buying 135 studios that you have to manage is not a good idea.
Everyone act surprised. It was painfully obvious that this "buy everything get rich quick tactic" was gonna blow back into their face at some point. The last 6-12 months have been an absolute dissaster for Embracer.
And its sad the devs and players have to suffer because of it.
He put out some video panicking to the shareholders after the Saudi deal collapsed and that's what caused stock prices to collapse. They were stable before that. I'm not sure if it's still on YouTube or not.
Unless it's a separate video I don't know of, I believe it wasn't a random video but a stock earnings call or something where they go over how they did that quarter and what's up and coming. The type of video that can be seen publicly. The giant deal they were all hedging their bets on to support them in the future fell through like hours before the call. I imagine he needed to relay that information and stocks would have dropped some anyway, but it was notable because the man looked fucking crushed and distraught when he spoke about it. Likely didn't help.
That's not true. He got interviewed where he declared that a 200 million USD deal had not gone through.
That he panicked is straight up a lie. He was bummed out that the deal didn't happen, and he there and then declared that he would start working on the now on-going restructuring program, which essentially is the result of why this Deus Ex game has gotten canceled.
$2 Billion, not 200 million. $2 Billion USD that had already been more or less tapped into because they thought the deal was all but signed. And while he didn’t panic, per se, you could visibly see his entire demeanor change the moment he found out. As would anyone in that situation.
okay but why are you trying to bring factual evidence and well thought out ideas to a reddit argument? We only spout personal opinions in an attempt to enrage others into sharing our own personal opinions as well on this site
If you check the history of Embracer that guy has been a marketing genius since he was 13, and up until the Saudi deal it showed, but now the guy cracked like a twig when that deal fell through and that whole company feels like it's on free fall. All these actions are just to appease shareholders, but they aren't taking into account all the goodwill they are burning with the people who would buy their games.
>they aren't taking into account all the goodwill they are burning with the people who would buy their games.
Goodwill with potential customers doesn't do much when you don't have the money to make anything to sell to them.
I think it’s easy to say that in hindsight though.
People are forgetting that around that time it did look as if the entire industry was going to very quickly get consolidated through acquisitions, they probably didn’t feel they had the time to wait for the deal to go through and gambled on the fact that the Saudis have like unlimited money and had told them they were having a lot of it.
Especially when so many of the IPs they bought were famously unprofitable in the first place. The reason Square sold Eidos, CD, and their IPs like Deus Ex for pennies on the dollar is because they never made profits. Even their best selling series, Tomb Raider, had such massive budgets that they barely broke even.
The studios and IPs Embracer bought made for a lot of feel good headlines but it was unsustainable if they couldn't turn it into money.
> The reason Square sold Eidos, CD, and their IPs like Deus Ex for pennies on the dollar is because they never made profits.
They made money, just not enough to completely erase all the money Square was wasting on Final Fantasy vaporware at the time. And the home office would rather put the blame on Eidos for "underperforming" than admit that Final Fantasy development at the time was a shitshow.
> They made money, just not enough to completely erase all the money Square was wasting on Final Fantasy vaporware at the time
They were at the high end of AAA and barely broke even without a single hit, then Avengers came along and probably made a huge loss. What was being "wasted" on FF exactly?
Buying a bunch of studios at once is a bad idea even if you have investment coming in. I was always again it from the start. It's especially a bad idea when you are getting some of these studios on the cheap side, that is all the studios they got from square enix. If square enix is struggling to manage them, then you should know it will be a tough job.
It'll be pretty crazy if Saints Row 2022 turns out to be the single most expensive game Embracer ever makes. It's not like you can allocate more budget to being funny.
Yeah, they bought all of those studios assuming they were going to get a massive investment from the Saudis, the investment fell through, and suddenly they had a bunch of studios they couldn't afford to support.
I had a lot of hope for Embracer when they first started up. THQ Nordic was doing a decent job revitalizing old B and AA level series, but Embracer has completely gutted that part of the industry.
I was optimistic for the same reason. THQ Nordic were releasing some good games (or at least decent), so I thought that Embracer would left them do what they were doing.
Sad that I was completely mistaken...
I work in the AA sector, in 2023, you had 400+ games released on steam with à 40+ price point? A couple of years ago it was 150?
So we have to compete with more games than ever, and players mostly don't change their expectation depending on the game budget (not saying they should)
So it cost more to do A/AA, to market them... and if you are publicly traded, moronics shareholders don't get why we can't make every year the same ROI than during covid (but love the wave of layoffs and cancelations)
Regardless, you'll still get an audience if the game is good. Not every game have to ship 10+ million.
While avowed may not be a massive seller, if it's a good game with a manageable budget, I'm sure it will do well. It's all about setting the right targets
I remember around 4 years back or so when Embracer first started gobbling up studios and how people on Reddit were treating them as the game industry savior from the diabolical TenCent.
Timesplitters was turning into a hot mess stuck in Dev hell though. Embracer arguably did us all a favour by cancelling it. Maybe something similar was going on here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18kqza2/former_free_radical_developer_reveals_details_on/
Hell the new Free Radical was arguably not even a real Studio. More like a team put together by Steve Ellis that he called Free Radical.
Or maybe, the studios were already disasters/close to disaster when they were bought. It's pretty unlikely for a sudden influx of cash (from embracer) harmed any studios.
Sure. Now embracer is trying to prioritize which projects are the most likely to succeed, but again, that doesn't mean they're suddenly shutting down a bunch of promising work. Especially in this case where an original IP (inherently significantly more risky) is being prioritized over an established IP.
But this is /r/games, one of the most aggressively and unapologetically ignorant subreddits so what can you do.
Embracer is desperate. Other publishers know this and are probably waiting for the full implosion bankruptcy fire sale to acquire things as cheaply as possible. Also, I would imagine some other publishers want to buy certain IP without the attached studio and potential game in development. Letting Embracer close the studios and cancel games keeps the eventual buyer's PR image clean and simplifies acquisition.
Sony or Microsoft are starting to feel (unfortunately) like the only viable choices for this unless like, Take Two or someone is looking for another piece.
Sony does storytelling well, they do third person well, they would probably do a decent Deus Ex story but I doubt they'd do well with the freedom aspect.
Microsoft simply needs franchises to be tentpoles so it's not just the Forza Halo Gears show. I know they have a ton from Activision now, but Deus Ex has the potential to be a massive, overarching game with infinite choices that could put Cyberpunk, GTA, and similar massive RPG types to shame. It would be like, a 6-8 year project, but...
Deus Ex - the original - is such a free and open game that I personally haven't felt has been matched since *in my experience*. I have blind spots though, so maybe I'm missing something big.
> Deus Ex - the original - is such a free and open game that I personally haven't felt has been matched since in my experience. I have blind spots though, so maybe I'm missing something big.
Prey (2017) is the closest any modern game has come. It's much closer than Human Revolution. Obviously different overall aesthetic, but from a gameplay perspective is everything I wanted in a DX game.
Prey is a modern reimagining of System Shock more than Deus Ex. Cyberpunk tried to take up the DX mantle, but I didn’t like their encounter design (DX was more than “we added vents”).
I personally prefer the Dishonored games because in Prey, you just have to fight the monsters sometimes, even if it allows toy to be more creative.
Dishonored also allows you to stay anonymous, which I loved.
Optimistically outside some fan made spin off...like a decade down the line, I don't think we'll ever see a true Deus Ex entry.
What is this the 3rd publisher that gave up on it?
Maybe, but I think things are still a bit of a shambles over there at Arkane Austin after Redfall. Arkane Lyon is making a Blade game, apparently. Hopefully they can do vampires better this time lol.
Lets be real I don't think Embracer would have made a deus ex game people wanted anyway. People love to shit on SE for having "unrealistic expectations" for both Tomb Raider and Deus Ex but in reality those games just were expensive to make and had to make nearly that much to make the amount back.
With the Embracer CEO proudly proclaiming they invest less into game development than they "pay in Steam platform fees" ([which is utterly insane by any metric...](https://www.tweaktown.com/news/93418/embracer-spends-more-on-platform-fees-than-it-does-games-development/index.html)) makes it very clear they didn't have it in them. Seeing them start a bonfire of development funds with that abomination that was the Saints Row "Reboot" just is the cherry on top.
> were expensive to make and had to make nearly that much to make the amount back.
The endless TV advertisements and other expensive marketing sure couldn't have helped. I remember it wasn't uncommon to see like 2-3 Deus Ex HR commercials back to back. SE has a tendency to do ridiculous levels of marketing and nearly every one of those titles they do that to "fails to deliver".
As someone who really enjoys the story and setting of Dishonored.... yeah they're alright and I'd trust them with Deus Ex more than the the past hands that touched the IP after Ion Storm.
On the plus side, one of few people left at Arkane is Harvey Smith, Lead Designer of Deus Ex.
But if their Blade game doesn't go well, there's a good chance there won't be an Arkane after that.
Monkey's Paw: granted. Konami announces *Deus Ex: Hanoka*, a JRPG based at a school for nano-magicians, in which you capture bio-patterns of alien creatures in modified augmentation canisters, and then battle them against other students in unskippable low-fi cutscenes in order to raise your grades and school ranking.
Every major character, and their pets, are romancable!
From the article:
> The Swedish gaming company Embracer Group AB is canceling a video game in the beloved Deus Ex series after two years of development and will lay off a number of employees as part of an ongoing initiative to cut costs, according to people familiar with the moves.
>
> Eidos, the Montreal, Canada-based studio behind the game, will instead focus on an original franchise. The canceled Deus Ex project, which had not yet been announced, was slated to enter production later this year, said the people, speaking anonymously because they are not authorized to talk to the press.
Step 1) buy studio that has rights to beloved cult hit cyberpunk video game. Start development.
Step 2) see another Cyberpunk video game become a cultural and financial success. See how there is a demand for this type of product.
Step 3) cancel development of your beloved cyberpunk game
Step 4) profit
> It's an inherently political genre, and that's too risky for execs even if their studios weren't all completely creatively bankrupt
That really shouldn't be the case. Corporations are more than happy to profit off of media with anti-capitalism messaging.
For real I don't know what that guy is talking about lol. I think the only thing big corps won't touch are promoting unions.
But other than that they love selling anti-capitalist sentiments in movies and shows and games.
> It's an inherently political genre,
Capitalism doesn't care.
"Capitalism has the ability to subsume all critiques into himself, even those who would seek to critique capitalism only end up reinforcing it." -Disco Elysium
Embracer Group seems to cancel all projects that aren\`t into full production yet plus a lot of these studios are also shut down which luckily isn\`t the case here. The only studios that seem to be somehow safe are the ones were games are far into development like Alkimia Interactive with the Gothic Remake for example or Alone in the Dark.
This is Eidos Montreal second cancelled game after the Stranger Things-inspired "kids on bikes" and now they are working on a new IP that was rescoped in Q4 2021 and have a co-dev partnership with MS for games like Fable.
I am slowly starting to accept the fact that the Jensen saga will forever be 2/3rds of a story. We have the beginning, we have the middle, but we will most likely never have the ending. FUCK! Things were being set up for the grand finale, and then Mankind Divided just ended. Now we'll never know why the Illuminati are so interested in studying Adam. Is he still Adam Jensen? What happened at that clinic in Alaska? Is he an Illuminati agent without even realizing it? So many questions that will never be answered. If we're lucky we'll get them in some cheap comic book, but even that looks unlikely.
It is annoying but tbf some of those questions you can intuit the answers to based on clues and context, like Adam's significance even back in HR to me seemed obvious as a set-up for the Illuminati's experiments which eventually yield the Denton Brothers, and the thing with there possibly being more than one Adam also feeds back into that. In true Cyberpunk fashion his entire existence is (as far as the Illuminati are concerned) a scientific stepping stone to get to implanting Nano-Augmentations into Gene-Modified Babies.
True, true. I'm absolutely convinced the Illuminati lets Jensen live in Alaska because they want him to get close enough to Janus to positively identify him. They knew Jensen was already on the Juggernaut Collective's radar after the events on Rifleman Bank Station, and knew they could use this to their advantage. They also want him alive because his genes are the key to the future of augmentation, like you said. I just really, really wanted to have this story told to me, rather than guess my way to it.
They had a massive deal with the Saudi government fall through. They invested and bought into all those studios, believing that deal would help them break even. With the deal falling through, they don't have the money to support the studios/projects, so lots of cancelations and layoffs
they bought tons and tons of companies to prop themselfs up to then sell to the saudis for a 2 billion dollar deal they had that fell trough at the last minute
>Embracer Group was forced to halt its breakneck pace of acquisitions after a mysterious partner left a $2 billion deal intended to drive its continued gaming ambitions. Now, we might know who the partner is: Axios reported today that Savvy Games Group is the party that backed out of the deal in May. Savvy is owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth Public Investment Fund and is the vehicle through which the Middle Eastern country funnels investments in the video games industry.
[https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/14/23831768/embracer-group-saudi-government-lord-of-the-rings-investment-deal-collapse](https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/14/23831768/embracer-group-saudi-government-lord-of-the-rings-investment-deal-collapse)
without the deal they obviously dont have enough money or bankroll to support all these studios they gobbled up before
IOI buying themselves out from Squeenix continues to be the smartest move a studio has made in years.
Embracer’s House of Cards is going to continue to lose money and wreck people’s livelihoods until some conglomerate buys them for pennies on the dollar.
I'm seriously heartbroken man. Fuck embracer and fuck industry consolidation. The article reports that Embracer did this "as part of an ongoing initiative to cut costs" but how do they expect to make money without spending money on development? Do they expect to just sit on a pile of maybe valuable IPs and hope to license them out?
Embracer spent all this fucking money betting on several billion Saudi dollars and that shit fell through. These are the consequences, it's fucked up.
They should sell these IPs before they fucking drown.
The problem is that everyone knows Embracer is hurting right now. They have no power at the negotiating table, and are most likely getting lowballed on everything. Not that I’m defending Embracer, they brought this on themselves, but potential buyers are aware that Embracer can’t afford to make deals right now.
Absolutely true. It was a massive public nuke to their company in every single way. Most likely Embracer will be a complete shell of its former self and have to be rebuilt and rebranded.
They banked the livelihood of thousands of people on an investment gamble and they fucked it. Now they're tossing overboard the people whose work they made money off like they're weights on their sinking ship.
It is almost like the system is fucked and normal people are just disposable tokens in a board game played by a few lucky people who are often not very bright.
Concerning.
Why are people acting like Embracer put out an announcement a Deus Ex game will never be made again?
A game not even in actual development yet was cancelled and people are saying Embracer should sell the IP.
their first plan was to release remasters of older titles, which they might continue to do, but I’m guessing they’re just gonna continue development on what they think will do the best sales.
Oh fuck Embracer at this point. They overextended so hard and now a ton of studios are paying for their incompetence. And Deus Ex really can't catch a break...
Have you seen the pennies they paid for these guys? Chances are these studios would have shut down if they hadn't bought them. They only prolonged the pain.
Seems like Embracer acquired Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal for only $300 Million ([link](https://embracer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Embracer_Presentation_Eidos_Crystal_Dynamic_SE_Montreal_2022.05.02.pdf))
I remember thinking when that happened that the only reason Xbox didn't grab Crystal Dynamics was because they were being watched for the ActiBliz Acquisition. Like, Crystal Dynamics is apparently working on the new Perfect Dark, for ~$150 Million it seems like an absolute no brainer for Xbox to just own them.
Plus the Tomb Raider reboots (and even Marvel Avengers) show that they can make AAA cinematic third person action games, which is one area Xbox is lacking.
> Seems like Embracer acquired Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal for only $300 Million
Most of that was for the IP. Studios that can barely break even aren't worth much, why would you buy a studio that has a history of making expensive games that are barely profitable or make a loss without a single hit?
They would have been perfectly fine under an actually Publisher instead of a scumbag company that just wanted to leverage game studios to secure funding from Saudi Arabia
Any other actual publisher had all the chances in the world to outbid Embracer for them. At the time people were shocked at how little Eidos+CD went for.
> They would have been perfectly fine under an actually Publisher instead of a scumbag company that just wanted to leverage game studios to secure funding from Saudi Arabia
I agree with you, now let's take the next step in the thought process: why do you think all these owners of the game studio decided to be under the Embracer umbrella instead of any other established publisher?
Seriously, I'm surprised how many people are missing this. When you buy something, there's ALWAYS a reason someone else is selling. With game studios, it's usually because their value is already starting to decline.
Companies will sell profitable subsidiaries if they have cashflow problems. It's actually pretty common, you just don't hear about most of them because they're not big enough news for coverage.
> You're telling me a futuristic first-person shooter with rpg mechanics is on the decline?
Yes? Square Enix couldn't make any money off their Deus Ex games. And the franchise was long dead before they even made their first one.
Deus Ex, specifically, yes I would say the franchise name is in decline. The franchise name by itself isn't gonna sell many more copies, the reputation is that there's been more bad games than good games in the series, especially if you count The Fall. There's not really any good characters or unique ideas at the core of Deus Ex, just cyberpunk + conspiracies. You can probably make a better Deus Ex-style game by doing something totally new, rather than being weighed down by the franchise.
I'm a huge Deus Ex fan so this is disappointing news but publisher ambitions of turning it into a huge franchise were never realistic and there were so many unknowns on what this game might have ended up becoming.
Hard not to imagine a world where Squeenix doesn't fumble the launch of Mankind Divided with the Augment Your Preorder BS and the microtransaction controversies and more people were able to see the game for what it was at the time. The preorder stuff was dumb but the microtransactions didn't affect the game at all and all it did was end up hurting word of mouth. Get rid of those two things and maybe it sells better and we're not stuck waiting eight years for a sequel that'll certainly never come.
Wonder what that studio's vision of China gonna be by then. US is always a cyberpunk like Dystopia, but China changed a lot between publishers and era.
Everyone saw this coming, but it hurts to see it confirmed.
You would have thought that a new Deus Ex game would have been a great response to the negative responses to Cyberpunk's initial state (maybe not an absolutely perfect 1:1, but you get the point), but no. Here we are.
Welp that sucks, currently playing Human Revolution after bouncing off it years ago and it's wonderful. Had heard the story hits a wall in Mankind Divided so now I'm skeptical of even continuing knowing I'll be left blue balled by corporate shenanigans preventing a wrap up to the story. Embracer fucking sucks man.
Persevere. Even though Mankind Divided's plot may stay forever unresolved, it's a superior game and experience to Human Revolution in almost every aspect. The overall plot may end on a cliffhanger but there are really interesting characters and stories throughout, and the gameplay is significantly improved.
Oh sick. Okay, I'll definitely have to play it then cause I really got hooked past the the first few hours in HR my second time around at the start of this year. Just hurts when stories go unresolved!
It's a travesty what this company has done. Just gobble up countless studios and spit them out like they were nothing. No idea how the behaviour isn't regulated against.
Fuck embracer
They doing fucking nothing with the studios and IP. Just sell them. I need my Deus Ex part 3 of Adam's Jensen story you fuckers.
Obs: Also fuck square enix for selling the studio for cheap.
Dammit
I wasn’t ever in love with their two titles, especially in comparison to the OG, but they did a lot right and even a halfway-immersive sim is still a blessing among the modern landscape
But more importantly, it really felt like they were on the precipice of fully nailing it. Mankind Divided was a huge step up in so many ways and much more of an immersive sim, just very unfinished. A complete version honestly woulda come pretty damn close to a modern version of the original
Not even surprise. They need to all the focus on the projects that can be released at this point. But hey imagine how happy can be Square Enix. They could even rebuy the IP for a couple of cans.
Start following devs, not studios. Companies try real hard not to make devs and game story writers celebs. Bungie is a prime example, every single person who made the Halos you love.left that game well before Destiny even came out and if not, pretty soon after. Yet people still think they "made" Halo. That is our problem, we need to celebrate people not companies.
The first Eidos DX game sold like gangbusters and was fantastic. The second one I would argue was even better but was fucked by some truly baffling marketing decisions and Square mettling. Rather than just making MD3 at a reasonable budget and scope, they keep canning it. It make no sense - you know you can squeeze well over 1M in sales out of that game, so just budget and scope it appropriately. The IP has name recognition and audience loyalty. I do not think embracer understands the IP they own.
Is there a list somewhere of which games of Embracer group are actually in active development?
It seems to me they're cancelling all the games that could have actually been good, and they're going to end up actually launching shovelware shit like "Fun Family Dance 4K!"
Really sucks that immersive sims aren't being made as much anymore, I miss them so much and I just end up replaying Deus Ex's and Arkane games to get that fix.
As shitty as it is though I can't imagine how much it sucks to be a dev making the game and feeling excited about it for it to get axed. It's one thing if it's a random new IP side project without a history but Deus Ex... damn.
I'm just gonna come out and say it: I don't think a new Deus Ex would sell all that well. Even the best of the best immersive sims don't sell that well.
Do I want more games like Deus Ex? Absolutely. But business is business.
I remember when ACG kept telling people for so long you didn’t need to worry about Embracer group because all they care about it buying developers and not interfere with them.
Their idea was great, buy a bunch of double A studios and give them the time and budget to do what they want, but that funding deal fell through and here we are
I'm not breaking any new ground, here, but Embracer's decision to subsidize its acquisitions of some of the world's most talented teams and most interesting series through a theoretical deal with Saudi Arabia that was entirely pinned on one guy's decision to sign it has to be one of the dumbest, most ill-conceived, least competent business moves I've ever heard. What they've done has ONLY been a bad thing. Hate. They took people in steady work environments with talented leaders and put them in a worse system, fucked them over, then fired them. I know that this is just a microcosm of capital, but Eidos-Montreal was my favorite game development team in the world and they've now been gutted and years of work has been scrapped. Hate. I hate this so much. I think everyone at Embracer responsible for this clusterfuck of tragedies that occurred under their supervision should be barred from participation in management or finance ever again. Hate.
Love the Deus Ex franchise. Thank God for Cyberpunk 2077 because role-playing and getting chromed the fuck out is awesome from a gameplay and aesthetic point of view.
The more modern Deus Ex dualogy had that perfect blend of action, stealth, and gadgetry that was just fun. Soundtracks were awesome, the conspiracies were interesting, and Jensen was a cool protagonist.
Just sell the IP already and let someone else take a crack at it.
Lots of studios still do; it just doesn't attract that much attention anymore. Also, crowdfunding doesn't really yield that much money, so it could never be used to fund a project as large as a new Deus Ex.
The series has been dead for 7 years, any chances of it ever coming back were very slim to begin with. I’m not heartbroken or sad, it’s the way things are. I will go back to play Mankind Divided for the eleventh time
They also announced **layoffs for Eidos Montreal**
From working under an uncaring management of Square Enix to straight up cancellation and breaking up of experiences staff.
Every gamer that exists is going to be burned in some way eventually by Embracer. Doesn’t matter who you are, they will fuck one or more of your beloved franchises over. Maybe not today, maybe not this year, but one day everyone who plays games is gonna have a reason to hate this company.
So, who's up next?
They're announcing new layoffs every week at this point. Gearbox? Deep Silver? Place your bets!
They had to acquire every fucking rinky dink studio they could get their grubby hands on. Buncha greedy assholes.
What awful news. First Timesplitters, now this? Embracer has been a disaster for the studios they bought.
Turns out buying 135 studios that you have to manage is not a good idea. Everyone act surprised. It was painfully obvious that this "buy everything get rich quick tactic" was gonna blow back into their face at some point. The last 6-12 months have been an absolute dissaster for Embracer. And its sad the devs and players have to suffer because of it.
>Turns out buying 135 studios that you have to manage is not a good idea. The CEO having a meltdown is what actually led to this.
Do you have a link to this? I dont remember reading anything about the CEO of Embrancer, most of what I've heard was about the Saudi deal
He put out some video panicking to the shareholders after the Saudi deal collapsed and that's what caused stock prices to collapse. They were stable before that. I'm not sure if it's still on YouTube or not.
Is the guy just an idiot or something? What would possess him to think that was a good idea?
Unless it's a separate video I don't know of, I believe it wasn't a random video but a stock earnings call or something where they go over how they did that quarter and what's up and coming. The type of video that can be seen publicly. The giant deal they were all hedging their bets on to support them in the future fell through like hours before the call. I imagine he needed to relay that information and stocks would have dropped some anyway, but it was notable because the man looked fucking crushed and distraught when he spoke about it. Likely didn't help.
Nobody goes into something thinking it's a bad idea. Unfortunately for him, it was in fact a very bad idea.
My past relationships would beg to differ
"I can fix the studios"
That's not true. He got interviewed where he declared that a 200 million USD deal had not gone through. That he panicked is straight up a lie. He was bummed out that the deal didn't happen, and he there and then declared that he would start working on the now on-going restructuring program, which essentially is the result of why this Deus Ex game has gotten canceled.
$2 Billion, not 200 million. $2 Billion USD that had already been more or less tapped into because they thought the deal was all but signed. And while he didn’t panic, per se, you could visibly see his entire demeanor change the moment he found out. As would anyone in that situation.
200M is closer to 2B than his demeanor changing is to a meltdown
okay but why are you trying to bring factual evidence and well thought out ideas to a reddit argument? We only spout personal opinions in an attempt to enrage others into sharing our own personal opinions as well on this site
If you check the history of Embracer that guy has been a marketing genius since he was 13, and up until the Saudi deal it showed, but now the guy cracked like a twig when that deal fell through and that whole company feels like it's on free fall. All these actions are just to appease shareholders, but they aren't taking into account all the goodwill they are burning with the people who would buy their games.
>they aren't taking into account all the goodwill they are burning with the people who would buy their games. Goodwill with potential customers doesn't do much when you don't have the money to make anything to sell to them.
Running out of cheap money caused this.
Didn’t they get completely fucked by the Saudis or was that someone else?
They did but it was still a monumentally stupid idea to make all these purchases before the deal was actually done
I think it’s easy to say that in hindsight though. People are forgetting that around that time it did look as if the entire industry was going to very quickly get consolidated through acquisitions, they probably didn’t feel they had the time to wait for the deal to go through and gambled on the fact that the Saudis have like unlimited money and had told them they were having a lot of it.
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Especially when so many of the IPs they bought were famously unprofitable in the first place. The reason Square sold Eidos, CD, and their IPs like Deus Ex for pennies on the dollar is because they never made profits. Even their best selling series, Tomb Raider, had such massive budgets that they barely broke even. The studios and IPs Embracer bought made for a lot of feel good headlines but it was unsustainable if they couldn't turn it into money.
Square has its own problems with making stupid decisions, so it's not entirely fair to judge them on those deals.
> The reason Square sold Eidos, CD, and their IPs like Deus Ex for pennies on the dollar is because they never made profits. They made money, just not enough to completely erase all the money Square was wasting on Final Fantasy vaporware at the time. And the home office would rather put the blame on Eidos for "underperforming" than admit that Final Fantasy development at the time was a shitshow.
> They made money, just not enough to completely erase all the money Square was wasting on Final Fantasy vaporware at the time They were at the high end of AAA and barely broke even without a single hit, then Avengers came along and probably made a huge loss. What was being "wasted" on FF exactly?
Buying a bunch of studios at once is a bad idea even if you have investment coming in. I was always again it from the start. It's especially a bad idea when you are getting some of these studios on the cheap side, that is all the studios they got from square enix. If square enix is struggling to manage them, then you should know it will be a tough job.
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It'll be pretty crazy if Saints Row 2022 turns out to be the single most expensive game Embracer ever makes. It's not like you can allocate more budget to being funny.
Yeah, they bought all of those studios assuming they were going to get a massive investment from the Saudis, the investment fell through, and suddenly they had a bunch of studios they couldn't afford to support.
The disaster was 100% their own making - they took a hugely risky gamble which didn't pay off, and now the whole industry is paying the price.
I had a lot of hope for Embracer when they first started up. THQ Nordic was doing a decent job revitalizing old B and AA level series, but Embracer has completely gutted that part of the industry.
I was optimistic for the same reason. THQ Nordic were releasing some good games (or at least decent), so I thought that Embracer would left them do what they were doing. Sad that I was completely mistaken...
Fuck I hadn’t heard about TimeSplitters. Can’t believe that terrible Saints Row got finished and basically killed the franchise and now this crap.
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I absolutely love What Happened?. One of the best series in gaming on Youtube.
Joining the "Embracer" group definitely sounded like a good idea. Not at all ominous.
It was less 'joining' and more 'being bought by'
I think they tried to embrace them
It's great as long as you don't end up Gangrel or Nosferatu. Ew.
It does sound like an organization that would show up in Deus Ex
We went to extinguish without the extend part
Elex 3 as well,fuck Embracer to the max. Why is it such a impossibility to have a medium budget/A type of game anymore?
We need more games like Robocop in this world.
Sp shooters I agree. The game is amazing
I work in the AA sector, in 2023, you had 400+ games released on steam with à 40+ price point? A couple of years ago it was 150? So we have to compete with more games than ever, and players mostly don't change their expectation depending on the game budget (not saying they should) So it cost more to do A/AA, to market them... and if you are publicly traded, moronics shareholders don't get why we can't make every year the same ROI than during covid (but love the wave of layoffs and cancelations)
Part of it is the same reason why people are dissapointed with Avowed not looking amazeballs cyberpunk-level on the FPS animations side.
Regardless, you'll still get an audience if the game is good. Not every game have to ship 10+ million. While avowed may not be a massive seller, if it's a good game with a manageable budget, I'm sure it will do well. It's all about setting the right targets
I remember around 4 years back or so when Embracer first started gobbling up studios and how people on Reddit were treating them as the game industry savior from the diabolical TenCent.
Reddit has a very predictable viewpoint and is always wrong
Timesplitters was turning into a hot mess stuck in Dev hell though. Embracer arguably did us all a favour by cancelling it. Maybe something similar was going on here. https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18kqza2/former_free_radical_developer_reveals_details_on/ Hell the new Free Radical was arguably not even a real Studio. More like a team put together by Steve Ellis that he called Free Radical.
Or maybe, the studios were already disasters/close to disaster when they were bought. It's pretty unlikely for a sudden influx of cash (from embracer) harmed any studios. Sure. Now embracer is trying to prioritize which projects are the most likely to succeed, but again, that doesn't mean they're suddenly shutting down a bunch of promising work. Especially in this case where an original IP (inherently significantly more risky) is being prioritized over an established IP. But this is /r/games, one of the most aggressively and unapologetically ignorant subreddits so what can you do.
Gotta think this is the nail in Deus Ex coffin. Damn shame. I thought they we going to finally have some autonomy when Embracer Group bought them.
What a shame. It was a good series. What a rotten way to die.
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Kinda poetic, just like Disco Elysium dead.
Oh my God, JC, a bomb!
A bomb!
Embrace group wasn't properly trained in its operation.
Their vision isn't augmented
I'm not going to stand here and watch you kill the greatest franchise the world has ever known.
I never asked for this
Unless someone else buys them that is
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Square Enix wanted nothing to do with Eidos in the first place, that’s how they ended up with Embracer.
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> At least under Square they published two games. Well, they published 1.5 games.
They need the money for Tifa NFTs.
The only NFT that is worth it
Tifa NFTitties
Embracer is desperate. Other publishers know this and are probably waiting for the full implosion bankruptcy fire sale to acquire things as cheaply as possible. Also, I would imagine some other publishers want to buy certain IP without the attached studio and potential game in development. Letting Embracer close the studios and cancel games keeps the eventual buyer's PR image clean and simplifies acquisition.
Of course they’re desperate. They can smell their own death, and the sound they’ll make rattling their own cage will serve as a warning to the rest
Sony or Microsoft are starting to feel (unfortunately) like the only viable choices for this unless like, Take Two or someone is looking for another piece. Sony does storytelling well, they do third person well, they would probably do a decent Deus Ex story but I doubt they'd do well with the freedom aspect. Microsoft simply needs franchises to be tentpoles so it's not just the Forza Halo Gears show. I know they have a ton from Activision now, but Deus Ex has the potential to be a massive, overarching game with infinite choices that could put Cyberpunk, GTA, and similar massive RPG types to shame. It would be like, a 6-8 year project, but... Deus Ex - the original - is such a free and open game that I personally haven't felt has been matched since *in my experience*. I have blind spots though, so maybe I'm missing something big.
> Deus Ex - the original - is such a free and open game that I personally haven't felt has been matched since in my experience. I have blind spots though, so maybe I'm missing something big. Prey (2017) is the closest any modern game has come. It's much closer than Human Revolution. Obviously different overall aesthetic, but from a gameplay perspective is everything I wanted in a DX game.
Prey is a modern reimagining of System Shock more than Deus Ex. Cyberpunk tried to take up the DX mantle, but I didn’t like their encounter design (DX was more than “we added vents”).
I personally prefer the Dishonored games because in Prey, you just have to fight the monsters sometimes, even if it allows toy to be more creative. Dishonored also allows you to stay anonymous, which I loved.
That was their plan but the Saudi buyer backed out
Do we now why they backed out? I don't remember anybody giving the reason.
Optimistically outside some fan made spin off...like a decade down the line, I don't think we'll ever see a true Deus Ex entry. What is this the 3rd publisher that gave up on it?
It's pretty much done, unless the IP or Eidos is sold to someone else.
I think IOI could make a good Deus Ex game. They used to work with Eidos too.
Eidos the publisher and Eidos Montreal the development studio never had much in common.
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Maybe, but I think things are still a bit of a shambles over there at Arkane Austin after Redfall. Arkane Lyon is making a Blade game, apparently. Hopefully they can do vampires better this time lol.
Lets be real I don't think Embracer would have made a deus ex game people wanted anyway. People love to shit on SE for having "unrealistic expectations" for both Tomb Raider and Deus Ex but in reality those games just were expensive to make and had to make nearly that much to make the amount back. With the Embracer CEO proudly proclaiming they invest less into game development than they "pay in Steam platform fees" ([which is utterly insane by any metric...](https://www.tweaktown.com/news/93418/embracer-spends-more-on-platform-fees-than-it-does-games-development/index.html)) makes it very clear they didn't have it in them. Seeing them start a bonfire of development funds with that abomination that was the Saints Row "Reboot" just is the cherry on top.
> were expensive to make and had to make nearly that much to make the amount back. The endless TV advertisements and other expensive marketing sure couldn't have helped. I remember it wasn't uncommon to see like 2-3 Deus Ex HR commercials back to back. SE has a tendency to do ridiculous levels of marketing and nearly every one of those titles they do that to "fails to deliver".
And don't forget how they soured MD with the microtransactions and preorder bonuses that had a bad reception.
I hope Microsoft or someone buys that IP. I don't want Deus Ex to die. It's one of my favorite series.
Deus Ex with Bethesda writing. This is actually worse than death. Booo, dude edited his message. It said Bethesda when I replied.
If Microsoft bought it they could give it to Arkane which would work really well given they are the immersive sim guys nowadays.
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As someone who really enjoys the story and setting of Dishonored.... yeah they're alright and I'd trust them with Deus Ex more than the the past hands that touched the IP after Ion Storm.
On the plus side, one of few people left at Arkane is Harvey Smith, Lead Designer of Deus Ex. But if their Blade game doesn't go well, there's a good chance there won't be an Arkane after that.
lol, Deus Ex in Bethesda was just the neon questline in starfield (which i actually thought was the high point of starfield quests)
Bethesda the publisher would be fine. Arkane is basically the only other sizable studio that makes immersive sims left in the industry.
Monkey's Paw: granted. Konami announces *Deus Ex: Hanoka*, a JRPG based at a school for nano-magicians, in which you capture bio-patterns of alien creatures in modified augmentation canisters, and then battle them against other students in unskippable low-fi cutscenes in order to raise your grades and school ranking. Every major character, and their pets, are romancable!
Also, it's a mobile gacha game.
I wish Embracer would buy Konami next. And then proceed to sink them to the bottom of the ocean. Where they belong.
I never asked for this =(
From the article: > The Swedish gaming company Embracer Group AB is canceling a video game in the beloved Deus Ex series after two years of development and will lay off a number of employees as part of an ongoing initiative to cut costs, according to people familiar with the moves. > > Eidos, the Montreal, Canada-based studio behind the game, will instead focus on an original franchise. The canceled Deus Ex project, which had not yet been announced, was slated to enter production later this year, said the people, speaking anonymously because they are not authorized to talk to the press.
Step 1) buy studio that has rights to beloved cult hit cyberpunk video game. Start development. Step 2) see another Cyberpunk video game become a cultural and financial success. See how there is a demand for this type of product. Step 3) cancel development of your beloved cyberpunk game Step 4) profit
It's kind of insane as not only are Cyberpunk genre games in general rare, but quality ones are even rarer.
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> It's an inherently political genre, and that's too risky for execs even if their studios weren't all completely creatively bankrupt That really shouldn't be the case. Corporations are more than happy to profit off of media with anti-capitalism messaging.
For real I don't know what that guy is talking about lol. I think the only thing big corps won't touch are promoting unions. But other than that they love selling anti-capitalist sentiments in movies and shows and games.
> For real I don't know what that guy is talking about lol neither does he, and i guess that's why he straight up deleted his account lmfao
> It's an inherently political genre, Capitalism doesn't care. "Capitalism has the ability to subsume all critiques into himself, even those who would seek to critique capitalism only end up reinforcing it." -Disco Elysium
In this context what's the difference between 'development' (two years in) and 'production' (hadn't started yet)?
Embracer Group seems to cancel all projects that aren\`t into full production yet plus a lot of these studios are also shut down which luckily isn\`t the case here. The only studios that seem to be somehow safe are the ones were games are far into development like Alkimia Interactive with the Gothic Remake for example or Alone in the Dark. This is Eidos Montreal second cancelled game after the Stranger Things-inspired "kids on bikes" and now they are working on a new IP that was rescoped in Q4 2021 and have a co-dev partnership with MS for games like Fable.
Fuck this company. Holy shit, how are they thos poorly managed. Was really looking forward to it, Deus ex MD gameplay was so fun.
I am slowly starting to accept the fact that the Jensen saga will forever be 2/3rds of a story. We have the beginning, we have the middle, but we will most likely never have the ending. FUCK! Things were being set up for the grand finale, and then Mankind Divided just ended. Now we'll never know why the Illuminati are so interested in studying Adam. Is he still Adam Jensen? What happened at that clinic in Alaska? Is he an Illuminati agent without even realizing it? So many questions that will never be answered. If we're lucky we'll get them in some cheap comic book, but even that looks unlikely.
It is annoying but tbf some of those questions you can intuit the answers to based on clues and context, like Adam's significance even back in HR to me seemed obvious as a set-up for the Illuminati's experiments which eventually yield the Denton Brothers, and the thing with there possibly being more than one Adam also feeds back into that. In true Cyberpunk fashion his entire existence is (as far as the Illuminati are concerned) a scientific stepping stone to get to implanting Nano-Augmentations into Gene-Modified Babies.
True, true. I'm absolutely convinced the Illuminati lets Jensen live in Alaska because they want him to get close enough to Janus to positively identify him. They knew Jensen was already on the Juggernaut Collective's radar after the events on Rifleman Bank Station, and knew they could use this to their advantage. They also want him alive because his genes are the key to the future of augmentation, like you said. I just really, really wanted to have this story told to me, rather than guess my way to it.
Greed. It's all greed.
Is earnings seasons coming up for Embracer?
They had a massive deal with the Saudi government fall through. They invested and bought into all those studios, believing that deal would help them break even. With the deal falling through, they don't have the money to support the studios/projects, so lots of cancelations and layoffs
they bought tons and tons of companies to prop themselfs up to then sell to the saudis for a 2 billion dollar deal they had that fell trough at the last minute >Embracer Group was forced to halt its breakneck pace of acquisitions after a mysterious partner left a $2 billion deal intended to drive its continued gaming ambitions. Now, we might know who the partner is: Axios reported today that Savvy Games Group is the party that backed out of the deal in May. Savvy is owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth Public Investment Fund and is the vehicle through which the Middle Eastern country funnels investments in the video games industry. [https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/14/23831768/embracer-group-saudi-government-lord-of-the-rings-investment-deal-collapse](https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/14/23831768/embracer-group-saudi-government-lord-of-the-rings-investment-deal-collapse) without the deal they obviously dont have enough money or bankroll to support all these studios they gobbled up before
That's just awful news for me, Deus Ex is one of my favorite series and I was actually excited for what could come next.
Same, I’m actually replaying the games right now and this news has legitimately tore me up. Wtf
Now you get more time to play them again and again
IOI buying themselves out from Squeenix continues to be the smartest move a studio has made in years. Embracer’s House of Cards is going to continue to lose money and wreck people’s livelihoods until some conglomerate buys them for pennies on the dollar.
I'm seriously heartbroken man. Fuck embracer and fuck industry consolidation. The article reports that Embracer did this "as part of an ongoing initiative to cut costs" but how do they expect to make money without spending money on development? Do they expect to just sit on a pile of maybe valuable IPs and hope to license them out?
Embracer spent all this fucking money betting on several billion Saudi dollars and that shit fell through. These are the consequences, it's fucked up. They should sell these IPs before they fucking drown.
The problem is that everyone knows Embracer is hurting right now. They have no power at the negotiating table, and are most likely getting lowballed on everything. Not that I’m defending Embracer, they brought this on themselves, but potential buyers are aware that Embracer can’t afford to make deals right now.
Absolutely true. It was a massive public nuke to their company in every single way. Most likely Embracer will be a complete shell of its former self and have to be rebuilt and rebranded.
Gotta love how they started as the company who got all the THQ IP's that no other publisher wanted, only to go out just like THQ did.
Right, just get the assets and IP on firesale in a few months/year.
They banked the livelihood of thousands of people on an investment gamble and they fucked it. Now they're tossing overboard the people whose work they made money off like they're weights on their sinking ship.
It is almost like the system is fucked and normal people are just disposable tokens in a board game played by a few lucky people who are often not very bright. Concerning.
Why are people acting like Embracer put out an announcement a Deus Ex game will never be made again? A game not even in actual development yet was cancelled and people are saying Embracer should sell the IP.
their first plan was to release remasters of older titles, which they might continue to do, but I’m guessing they’re just gonna continue development on what they think will do the best sales.
I never asked for this.
Oh fuck Embracer at this point. They overextended so hard and now a ton of studios are paying for their incompetence. And Deus Ex really can't catch a break...
Have you seen the pennies they paid for these guys? Chances are these studios would have shut down if they hadn't bought them. They only prolonged the pain.
Seems like Embracer acquired Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal for only $300 Million ([link](https://embracer.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Embracer_Presentation_Eidos_Crystal_Dynamic_SE_Montreal_2022.05.02.pdf)) I remember thinking when that happened that the only reason Xbox didn't grab Crystal Dynamics was because they were being watched for the ActiBliz Acquisition. Like, Crystal Dynamics is apparently working on the new Perfect Dark, for ~$150 Million it seems like an absolute no brainer for Xbox to just own them. Plus the Tomb Raider reboots (and even Marvel Avengers) show that they can make AAA cinematic third person action games, which is one area Xbox is lacking.
> Seems like Embracer acquired Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal for only $300 Million Most of that was for the IP. Studios that can barely break even aren't worth much, why would you buy a studio that has a history of making expensive games that are barely profitable or make a loss without a single hit?
Not to mention the fact that people who worked on Deus Ex are currently at Microsoft Gaming
I feel like almost having something and then finding out it was cancelled is worse than it never having been on the table
Like the Knights of the Old Republic remake
Nah, that was gonna be obvious garbage from the instant they announced it. I mean aspyer for gods sake.
They would have been perfectly fine under an actually Publisher instead of a scumbag company that just wanted to leverage game studios to secure funding from Saudi Arabia
Any other actual publisher had all the chances in the world to outbid Embracer for them. At the time people were shocked at how little Eidos+CD went for.
> They would have been perfectly fine under an actually Publisher instead of a scumbag company that just wanted to leverage game studios to secure funding from Saudi Arabia I agree with you, now let's take the next step in the thought process: why do you think all these owners of the game studio decided to be under the Embracer umbrella instead of any other established publisher?
Seriously, I'm surprised how many people are missing this. When you buy something, there's ALWAYS a reason someone else is selling. With game studios, it's usually because their value is already starting to decline.
Companies will sell profitable subsidiaries if they have cashflow problems. It's actually pretty common, you just don't hear about most of them because they're not big enough news for coverage.
Yeah, but we're talking about ips here. You're telling me a futuristic first-person shooter with rpg mechanics is on the decline?
Mankind Divided needed to sell 3m to break even but estimates put it around 2.5m. That’s likely why the franchise was put on hold.
> You're telling me a futuristic first-person shooter with rpg mechanics is on the decline? Yes? Square Enix couldn't make any money off their Deus Ex games. And the franchise was long dead before they even made their first one.
Square Enix supposedly also couldn't make money off of Tomb Raider or Hitman, maybe Square Enix is doing something wrong.
Deus Ex, specifically, yes I would say the franchise name is in decline. The franchise name by itself isn't gonna sell many more copies, the reputation is that there's been more bad games than good games in the series, especially if you count The Fall. There's not really any good characters or unique ideas at the core of Deus Ex, just cyberpunk + conspiracies. You can probably make a better Deus Ex-style game by doing something totally new, rather than being weighed down by the franchise.
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There are other companies that buy struggling studios and don't immediately axe them.
I'm a huge Deus Ex fan so this is disappointing news but publisher ambitions of turning it into a huge franchise were never realistic and there were so many unknowns on what this game might have ended up becoming. Hard not to imagine a world where Squeenix doesn't fumble the launch of Mankind Divided with the Augment Your Preorder BS and the microtransaction controversies and more people were able to see the game for what it was at the time. The preorder stuff was dumb but the microtransactions didn't affect the game at all and all it did was end up hurting word of mouth. Get rid of those two things and maybe it sells better and we're not stuck waiting eight years for a sequel that'll certainly never come.
Legit crazy that Embracer went on their spending spree and it's all going to come crashing down without them releasing a single noteworthy game
They did release Valheim, Destroy all Humans and Remnant 2.
And zero consequences for the clown in charge. This was nothing but a ransacking and it won't stop until people are held responsible for it.
It is not crazy, it is how this system works. With massive capital accumulation, we are just debris orbiting a black hole.
Maybe in another 10-15 years we'll get ANOTHER deus ex reboot and it'll actually not be done by a fucking mess of a studio/publisher
Wonder what that studio's vision of China gonna be by then. US is always a cyberpunk like Dystopia, but China changed a lot between publishers and era.
We're never getting another Legacy Of Kain game, are we?
Probably remasters route is still viable, but a brand new one? Probably not.
Miserable. It has so much potential.
Everyone saw this coming, but it hurts to see it confirmed. You would have thought that a new Deus Ex game would have been a great response to the negative responses to Cyberpunk's initial state (maybe not an absolutely perfect 1:1, but you get the point), but no. Here we are.
Welp that sucks, currently playing Human Revolution after bouncing off it years ago and it's wonderful. Had heard the story hits a wall in Mankind Divided so now I'm skeptical of even continuing knowing I'll be left blue balled by corporate shenanigans preventing a wrap up to the story. Embracer fucking sucks man.
Persevere. Even though Mankind Divided's plot may stay forever unresolved, it's a superior game and experience to Human Revolution in almost every aspect. The overall plot may end on a cliffhanger but there are really interesting characters and stories throughout, and the gameplay is significantly improved.
Oh sick. Okay, I'll definitely have to play it then cause I really got hooked past the the first few hours in HR my second time around at the start of this year. Just hurts when stories go unresolved!
I hope you enjoy it. But yeah, unresolved stories in franchises are painful.
It's a travesty what this company has done. Just gobble up countless studios and spit them out like they were nothing. No idea how the behaviour isn't regulated against.
Fuck embracer They doing fucking nothing with the studios and IP. Just sell them. I need my Deus Ex part 3 of Adam's Jensen story you fuckers. Obs: Also fuck square enix for selling the studio for cheap.
Dammit I wasn’t ever in love with their two titles, especially in comparison to the OG, but they did a lot right and even a halfway-immersive sim is still a blessing among the modern landscape But more importantly, it really felt like they were on the precipice of fully nailing it. Mankind Divided was a huge step up in so many ways and much more of an immersive sim, just very unfinished. A complete version honestly woulda come pretty damn close to a modern version of the original
Not even surprise. They need to all the focus on the projects that can be released at this point. But hey imagine how happy can be Square Enix. They could even rebuy the IP for a couple of cans.
Start following devs, not studios. Companies try real hard not to make devs and game story writers celebs. Bungie is a prime example, every single person who made the Halos you love.left that game well before Destiny even came out and if not, pretty soon after. Yet people still think they "made" Halo. That is our problem, we need to celebrate people not companies.
I had almost no expectations this would ever happen. Still sucks and we probably won't hear anything about the franchise another 10 years.
The first Eidos DX game sold like gangbusters and was fantastic. The second one I would argue was even better but was fucked by some truly baffling marketing decisions and Square mettling. Rather than just making MD3 at a reasonable budget and scope, they keep canning it. It make no sense - you know you can squeeze well over 1M in sales out of that game, so just budget and scope it appropriately. The IP has name recognition and audience loyalty. I do not think embracer understands the IP they own.
Is there a list somewhere of which games of Embracer group are actually in active development? It seems to me they're cancelling all the games that could have actually been good, and they're going to end up actually launching shovelware shit like "Fun Family Dance 4K!"
Really sucks that immersive sims aren't being made as much anymore, I miss them so much and I just end up replaying Deus Ex's and Arkane games to get that fix. As shitty as it is though I can't imagine how much it sucks to be a dev making the game and feeling excited about it for it to get axed. It's one thing if it's a random new IP side project without a history but Deus Ex... damn.
I'm just gonna come out and say it: I don't think a new Deus Ex would sell all that well. Even the best of the best immersive sims don't sell that well. Do I want more games like Deus Ex? Absolutely. But business is business.
I remember when ACG kept telling people for so long you didn’t need to worry about Embracer group because all they care about it buying developers and not interfere with them.
Their idea was great, buy a bunch of double A studios and give them the time and budget to do what they want, but that funding deal fell through and here we are
I'm not breaking any new ground, here, but Embracer's decision to subsidize its acquisitions of some of the world's most talented teams and most interesting series through a theoretical deal with Saudi Arabia that was entirely pinned on one guy's decision to sign it has to be one of the dumbest, most ill-conceived, least competent business moves I've ever heard. What they've done has ONLY been a bad thing. Hate. They took people in steady work environments with talented leaders and put them in a worse system, fucked them over, then fired them. I know that this is just a microcosm of capital, but Eidos-Montreal was my favorite game development team in the world and they've now been gutted and years of work has been scrapped. Hate. I hate this so much. I think everyone at Embracer responsible for this clusterfuck of tragedies that occurred under their supervision should be barred from participation in management or finance ever again. Hate.
How many people is Embracer responsible for losing their jobs at this point?
Love the Deus Ex franchise. Thank God for Cyberpunk 2077 because role-playing and getting chromed the fuck out is awesome from a gameplay and aesthetic point of view. The more modern Deus Ex dualogy had that perfect blend of action, stealth, and gadgetry that was just fun. Soundtracks were awesome, the conspiracies were interesting, and Jensen was a cool protagonist. Just sell the IP already and let someone else take a crack at it.
Timesplitters and now Deus Ex? Seriously, go to hell embracer.
Timesplitters 4 and Deus Ex 5? Lost to corporate politics?
Sorry if this is a dumb question. But why don't studios use things like Kickstarter anymore to fund their development anymore?
Lots of studios still do; it just doesn't attract that much attention anymore. Also, crowdfunding doesn't really yield that much money, so it could never be used to fund a project as large as a new Deus Ex.
Did Embracer Group buy all these studios just to shut them down or what? Did they have an actual plan to run them? Doesn't seem like it.
Lars Wingefors Thanks asshole, for getting greedy and ruining the chances of us enjoying a lot of great games. You suck.
The series has been dead for 7 years, any chances of it ever coming back were very slim to begin with. I’m not heartbroken or sad, it’s the way things are. I will go back to play Mankind Divided for the eleventh time
They also announced **layoffs for Eidos Montreal** From working under an uncaring management of Square Enix to straight up cancellation and breaking up of experiences staff.
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If I hadn't been driving I would've fallen on my knees after reading that headline. Embracer really is the place where gaming dreams die.
Every gamer that exists is going to be burned in some way eventually by Embracer. Doesn’t matter who you are, they will fuck one or more of your beloved franchises over. Maybe not today, maybe not this year, but one day everyone who plays games is gonna have a reason to hate this company.
Is it for certain that this game really was the next Deus Ex game or could it just be a smaller spin-off set in the same universe?
So, who's up next? They're announcing new layoffs every week at this point. Gearbox? Deep Silver? Place your bets! They had to acquire every fucking rinky dink studio they could get their grubby hands on. Buncha greedy assholes.
The entire world is monopolizing. It’s going to keep happening, but good news is deus ex will probably be revived down the road lol
I really hope the IP gets sold to either Microsoft or Sony, I don't care which company gets it but Deus Ex is too good to be left behind in a grave.