M&A and Investment

Atari has suddenly launched a new publishing label under the revived Infogrames brand. And it has already announced its game acquisition.

KRAFTON has invested money in the Polish studio Far From Home, known for cooperative survival on the Forever Skies airship. She announced the purchase of a minority stake.

The organizers of the Gamedev conference.World, including indie developer Rami Ismail, presented the Global Games Fund. He will support gaming startups "outside the Western world."

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, has raised $7.2 billion for new investments. She has already transferred $600 million of them to the budget of the a16z Games foundation, which deals with gaming companies.

Red Rover Interactive is a young studio founded last year by former employees of Funcom, Bohemia Interactive and Lockwood Publishing. On April 16, she successfully closed the Series A funding round.

Content Warning is without a doubt one of the biggest surprise hit this year so far. However, developer Landfall Games didn’t expect the game to sell hundreds of thousands of units after the end of its viral free-to-claim launch.

The Swiss publisher of mobile games Miniclip has acquired a non-core asset for itself. The company includes FuturLab studio, which develops games for consoles and PCs and is best known for the PowerWash Simulator.

The difficult times for gaming companies continue. Ascendant Studios, which created the Immortals of Aveum shooter, forcibly transferred most of its employees to a long unpaid leave. This is reported by the Game Developer with reference to a LinkedIn post by Phoenix Labs Chief Engineer Chris Morness.

Kenshi, a genre-bending sandbox game, has reached a new milestone. The cult indie title has now sold over 2.3 million copies since its global launch.

Champions of Otherworldly Magic is a digital card game, and it appears that all the art for it was generated using AI tools. According to the developers, they have already paid tens of thousands of dollars to a single “AI artist” over the past six months.

The question of how a developer can reserve the right to the game in case of receiving an investment is answered in their column by Irina Gushchina and Vadim Kocheshev, lawyers at Semenov &Pevzner.

At the end of March, SEGA announced the sale of Relic Entertainment, and a week later, the studio underwent massive layoffs. According to producer Robyn Smale, Relic Entertainment has fired a total of 41 people.

The premium version of Dwarf Fortress is approaching an impressive milestone of 1 million copies sold. And the Adams brothers have no plans to stop developing their life’s project.

Nikolay Katselapov, one of the founders of Wargaming, has opened his own investment fund. It's called Mika Games. He will invest in mobile startups.

Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch in an interview with GamesIndustry discussed the recently completed restructuring of the Embracer Group and the general condition of the Swedish holding company. We have collected the main theses.

In a turbulent time for the games industry, many developers are struggling to secure investment. Market intelligence platform InvestGame has just published a curated list of gaming-focused funds, opening it up to everyone.

InvestGame analysts decided to help game developers, as well as esports and Web3 companies with the search for financing. They have posted a table with specialized funds in the public domain.

Capcom has shared the launch sales of Dragon’s Dogma 2, its first major release of 2024. The game has been a success, with over 2.5 million copies sold globally since its launch on March 22.

Hasbro, parent company of Wizards of the Coast, plans to strengthen its position in the video game industry. To achieve this goal, the owner of brands like Dungeons & Dragons and Monopoly has split $1 billion between studios working on several AAA titles.

Divestments of Saber Interactive and Gearbox Entertainment were the last major parts of Embracer Group’s restructuring program. The Swedish holding company plans to retain its remaining portfolio, having no plans to enter into any deals in the near future.

Summerhouse is a very minimalistic and relaxing town builder. Its simple formul and the lack of strict rules has resonated in the hearts of the players, becoming a huge success for German solo developer Friedemann.

Shortly after the divestment of Saber Interactive, another operative group is leaving Embracer. The Swedish holding company has just announced its decision to sell Gearbox Entertainment to Take-Two.

RPGs have always been one of the most difficult and risky genres in terms of production. Here is what Owlcat Games founder and CEO Oleg Shpilchevskiy has to say about the challenges posed by rising costs, as well as the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 and its impact on the industry.

Vedomosti newspaper discovered in the SPARK-Interfax database that in October 2023 Mikhail Akulov, one of the founders and CEO of the Hobby World board game publishing house, registered Novodel LLC. According to the description, the company specializes in the development and publication of video games.

According to the documents published on the web, it can be concluded (assumption) that, in fact, Saber Interactive bought itself from the Embracer Group.

The Swedish holding company Embracer Group announced that it has entered into an agreement to sell a number of Saber Interactive assets for 2.57 billion Swedish kronor or $ 247 million.

It became known about the new investment of The Games Fund. This time, the venture fund invested $ 1.5 million in the Roar Games studio.

The Resident Evil 4 remake, one of the most successful games of 2023, has reached a new milestone. It has now cemented its place among the best-selling titles in the entire franchise.

Monster Hunter: World has reached a new sales milestone. Six years after its launch, it remains the most commercially successful game in the franchise, which has just celebrated its 20th anniversary.

It’s always great to see indie games succeed in the market. Backpack Battles, an auto-battling RPG with an interesting hook, is doing really well on Steam right now, exceeding the expectations of its creators.

Ori has been one of the most successful Metroidvania series of all time. And Moon Studios probably wouldn’t be in the industry today if it weren’t for the first game’s commercial performance.

Balatro has been a smash success for solo developer LocalThunk. The poker deck-building roguelike has reached a new milestone, selling over 500k copies in 10 days.

As many game companies around the world continue to cut jobs, Capcom has announced its decision to raise salaries for its Japanese employees. The move will impact both current workers and new graduate hires.

Tropic Haze, the maker of Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu, has agreed to settle with the Japanese company. One of the terms is an admission that the software was “primarily designed” to circumvent copyright protection.

The fate of 91Act, a Chinese studio behind the new action roguelike BlazBlue Entropy Effect, has taken an unexpected turn. The studio’s head had to lay off the entire staff due to financial issues, but now he has decided to start rehiring devs after the game’s sudden success.

Embracer Group might divest another of its operative groups as part of its cost-cutting restructuring. It has been reported that Gearbox Entertainment, best known for the Borderlands series, is close to being sold out.

This happened after 19 years of working as a division of Activision. The information is official. This was announced on the studio's website.

Embracer Group continues its cost-cutting restructuring program. The new move might affect one of its largest operative groups, Saber Interactive.

The management of Playtika stopped looking for a buyer for the company and decided to actively take up M&A. At an investor event, Craig Abrahams, President and CFO of Playtika, announced that the company plans to conclude one or two deals per year.

Stardew Valley has reached an impressive milestone, surpassing 30 million copies sold globally. Here is how the figure compares to other successful indie games.

The launch sales of the Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor car scooter exceeded all the expectations of the developers. Funday Games announced that the game has reached the mark of half a million copies sold just a week after it was released in early access.

Following the announcement of the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC, FromSoftware has updated sales figures for the original Elden Ring game. It seems that players continue to actively buy the studio’s action RPG.

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader has reached its first sales milestone one month after its global launch. Let’s take a look at its launch figures and recall the commercial performance of Owlcat Games’ previous titles.

Alan Wake 2 has become the fastest-selling game in the history of Remedy Entertainment. The psychological horror title has sold 1.3 million copies in more than three months.

Tekken 8 has reached an impressive milestone in less than a month after its launch. Bandai Namco’s title also joined other successful Japanese games launched since the beginning of 2024.

To celebrate Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s sixth anniversary, Warhorse Studios has shared updated sales figures for its medieval RPG.

With over 1 million copies sold, Granblue Fantasy: Relink has now joined a list of other successful Japanese games to cross this mark in 2024.

On February 13, the role-playing action game Kingdom Come: Deliverance turned six years old. In honor of the birthday, Warhorse Studios announced that the number of copies of the game sold exceeded 6 million copies.

It seems like Helldivers 2 is exceeding expectations after its strong launch last week. The game has already sold around 1 million units in less than a week.

Take-Two has published a financial report for the third quarter ended December 31, 2023. The company is now working on a cost reduction program, which doesn’t involve job cuts.