Embracer Group posted its fiscal year Q3 2022 earnings today, representing the fourth quarter of the year (October, November, and December). The megacorp saw revenues increase 128%, largely on the strength of its PC games segment.
While the company includes advertising, mobile, comic, and tabletop segments, it’s the PC side of its back catalogue we’re most interested in here on MOP, as Embracer owns Gearbox, which is the current home of the Cryptic MMOs Neverwinter, Star Trek Online, and Champions Online, given that Perfect World sold its western branch (PWE) to Gearbox back in 2021. In fact, both STO and Neverwinter are listed in the company’s top-10 back catalog revenue drivers (#6 and #7, respectively). The company’s pipeline also includes multiplayer titles Valheim, Warlander, and After the Fall, but there’s little other info given about specific titles in our purview.
What might be most interesting in the report is the clarification that the company has not two but five Lord of the Rings titles in progress following its buy-up of Middle-Earth Enterprises last year. The two we knew about were Daedalic’s Gollum game and Free Range Games’ Return to Moria.
“In the quarter, Freemode closed the previously announced acquisition Middle-Earth Enterprises. For Freemode, this acquisition has generated a lot of interest among both internal and external partners for the Lord of the Rings IP, across different media formats. There are currently five games in production by external partners, to be released in financial year 2023/24. There is also one film in production by an external partner.”
