Embracer Group is a video game company which owns over 70 studios around the world. Things haven’t been looking good for its studios lately, as they have been suffering from layoffs and closures.
The next studio to meet this fate is Crystal Dynamics which is the team behind the Tomb Raider Survivor trilogy. It is currently developing the next Tomb Raider game which will be published by Amazon.
On Twitter, the studio announced that it had to part ways with nine brand/marketing employees, as well as an IT employee. According to LinkedIn, the studio has 201 to 500 employees. Crystal Dynamics states that the difficult choice was made to align the studio with its current business needs.
Some of the ex-employees affected by the layoffs have identified themselves (as Eurogamer reports), including senior brand manager Nicholas Edwards who revealed on LinkedIn that he is no longer working at Crystal Dynamics.
Embracer Group is changing its business strategy
Embracer Group had been on a buying spree, but that has come to a halt. As revealed in an open letter, it is now focused on becoming a highly cash-flow generative business. The consequence of this has been the closure of studios like Volition and layoffs in studios such as Beamdog.
It appears that not even Embracer’s biggest studios are safe, as there have been reports of the company showing interest in selling off Gearbox, the studio behind Borderlands. This leaves us with uncertainty regarding all of Embracer’s studios.
