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Chikout wrote:
They just bought Dark Horse comics too. They really are on a spending spree.

Dark Horse's official statement

 Wiz Warrior wrote:

Embracer needs to make sure it steers as clear from Christian Peterson as possible. But now that CP has bought out the FFG "Game Shop", he is attempting to climb back in the industry after he has cashed out from his sale of FFG to asmodee. FFG suffered greatly under his continued leadership when asmodee made him an operation manager for the north american portion. Indeed, acquiring FFG was the worst thing asmodee could have done for gaming.

Many livelihoods were affected by CPs mismanagement, and his bowing to the hedgefunds parasitic desire to run the ship on a veritable skeleton crew while paying out quite a sum to ghost consultants.

Thats a take. FFG was doing great when CP was running things, and suffered when he was moved over to run the ANA business because he was no longer directly running things at FFG (and the guys brought him to replace him IMO weren't much good at their job), and things got even worse after 2018 when he left Asmodee entirely. I don't think CP is the problem here.

That being said, yeah Asmodee acquiring FFG was awful all around for the industry, but money gonna money.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
That Dark Horse acquisition is potentially a huge deal, it gives Embracer access to a lot of unique IPs that they can leverage into video games AND board games.

This ignores the steady decline under his management after the height of FFGs relevance prior to them becoming the star wars game company.

Any manager who will create NDA contracts with punitive measures against any internal criticism should be looked at with a raised eyebrow.

He wasnt THE problem, but he nurtured a work environment where you could be fired for being anything less than a sycophant.

So yeah, its a "take". One which involves my own business involvement with him and FFG over the course of time between 2008 and 2016.

I understand your experience is different, or rather, your significant others. But that doesnt invalidate mine. CP is a toxic boss, tldr.

So over on reddit, in a video game subreddit, it was explained how Embracer is getting all this money.

Basicly Swedish law requires pension to keep the majority of their Invesments within Sweeden. Some Pensions, and other firms, decided to park their money with them over the past few years.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
It's rare to see a game that old get new content.

They did that with Titan Quest. Game came out in 2006, got one expansion. Then out of nowhere in 2016, anniversary edition, new expansion, and since then, there has been two more. It's to the point where by expansion content alone, you might have more content than the base game.

 Wiz Warrior wrote:
This ignores the steady decline under his management after the height of FFGs relevance prior to them becoming the star wars game company.

Any manager who will create NDA contracts with punitive measures against any internal criticism should be looked at with a raised eyebrow.

He wasnt THE problem, but he nurtured a work environment where you could be fired for being anything less than a sycophant.

So yeah, its a "take". One which involves my own business involvement with him and FFG over the course of time between 2008 and 2016.

I understand your experience is different, or rather, your significant others. But that doesnt invalidate mine. CP is a toxic boss, tldr.

This is very true. The attrition rate for FFG USA jobs has always been staggering.

As Asmodee-related acquisition news goes, this seems somewhat positive - hopefully a more stable future with owners interested in seeing it continue to make products rather than squeeze a few more dollars from its desiccated corpse. How pleasant for a change.

 Laughing Man wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
MM was bought by Asmodee many months ago, before Asmodee was put up for sale.

The MM purchase is a pretty huge deal, it gives Asmodee access to a lot of data about competitors products and marketplace performance (data which they can then use to identify potential acquisitions, as well as industry trends for the purposes of new product development). Im willing to be that Asmodee will be franchising/expanding the MM model to establish a network of retail stores that would also double as evommerce distribution centers.

As someone who lives in their home town, their stores definitely do not double as distribution centers. The warehouse is on the other side of the city from their retail locations, and last I was there only had a very limited selection of dings and dents on their showroom floor.

I live 2 miles from their warehouse and would stop by there twice a week when the shop was attached to the warehouse. I was getting great deals all the time. Since they moved and opened a second shop the opportunities for those gems have disappeared. Hopefully the merger will get them access to all the dings and dents from all the asmodee and THQ companies. It would at least save them from dumping it cheap online or other distributors.

I found out about this first via STO of all things as Embracer has also purchased Perfect World Entertainment and placed it under Gearbox. PWE owns Runic Games (Torchlight) and Cryptic Studios (City of Heroes and Star Trek Online).

 LordofHats wrote:
I found out about this first via STO of all things as Embracer has also purchased Perfect World Entertainment and placed it under Gearbox. PWE owns Runic Games (Torchlight) and Cryptic Studios (City of Heroes and Star Trek Online).

Hot dang. Really interested to see what the future holds for these studios and what Embracer does with them.

I mean, if nothing else I don't imagine Gearbox is going to be any worse than PW. If nothing else, maybe they'll salvage the Torchlight series from the dung heap PW drove it into. Sadly, Cryptic again tried to buy the rights to City of Heroes last year and were again unable to acquire the IP.

Is Embracer just buying its way into being a major publisher on the scale of EA, Activision Blizzard, and Ubisoft?

Embracer Group may be the best name since Engulf and Devour from the movie Ruthless People.

chaos0xomega wrote:
MM was bought by Asmodee many months ago, before Asmodee was put up for sale.

The MM purchase is a pretty huge deal, it gives Asmodee access to a lot of data about competitors products and marketplace performance (data which they can then use to identify potential acquisitions, as well as industry trends for the purposes of new product development). Im willing to be that Asmodee will be franchising/expanding the MM model to establish a network of retail stores that would also double as evommerce distribution centers.

I wonder if this explains the new emails MM has been sending the last couple months requesting I fill out surveys or product reviews.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Is Embracer just buying its way into being a major publisher on the scale of EA, Activision Blizzard, and Ubisoft?

Their MO seems to be about buying companies they feel could keep generating money in the long term. Not some hit that might burn out in a few years but stable even if low profits (or potential for that). Usually (relatively) smaller video game devs (not huge ones but also not tiny indie teams). Feels like Warren Buffett for video game just with less cash flow. They got Dark Horse (IP), Asmodee (board games, IP synergy), and a one/two 3D asset and CGI movie studios (again synergy to all their video game studios) to maybe create more value for each of those aquisitions (more IPs for more video games, possibility of board games for all the IPs too, asset and movie studio to support all the video game studios).

At least that's what I get from them buying up all this stuff.