What started as a massive spending spree has ended in Embracer Group becoming one of the most hated companies in gaming and purging their assets. Just after it was reported that Saber Interactive would be headed out to become a privately owned company, Ethan Gach of Kotaku has reported that Gearbox Software, developers of the Borderlands series, is set to be sold to another company soon. There is no word on whether a deal has been formally accepted or what company is in the talking for it.
Embracer Group acquired Gearbox back in 2021 for $1.3 billion. The company was recklessly spending a lot of money acquiring various studios until a Saudi-backed $2 billion deal fell through. Since then, the company has laid off numerous employees, canceled projects, and completely shut down studios. We don’t expect this to be the end of that news.
According to Gach, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, who is almost just about as controversial as Embracer, had been letting employees know that there were three potential outcomes for Borderlands developer: stay with Embracer, go independent, or sell to another company. If a buyer has made themselves known, we imagine the Borderlands IP will be moving over along with the overarching company.
Gearbox is not just Borderlands, though that is their prized possession. Gearbox has published quite a few games with varying success. Remnant II and the return of Gigantic are the most recent standouts. For another company to come in and acquire them and who knows how many assets under them, we imagine it has to be a pretty large company. That being said, we would almost assuredly rule out PlayStation or Xbox acquiring another studio of this size with the recent mass layoffs and other deals they have done.
Speaking speculatively, Amazon could be in the cards, but outside of that, we have a hard time imagining any large video game corporation taking on Gearbox when the industry is in such a volatile state as it is in 2024.
