That’s right, friends, Embracer Group is back in the business headlines again. Following the stated end of restructuring efforts, corporate leadership has now decided to cut the company up into “three standalone publicly listed entities” to allow them to “focus on their respective core strategies and offer more differentiated and distinct equity stories for existing and new shareholders.”
Of the three companies in question, the one that MMORPG fans care about is Coffee Stain & Friends, which will be where Deca and Cryptic fall under along with several other studios. This company collectively oversees Star Trek Online, Neverwinter, and other multiplayer titles like Deep Rock Galactic and Valheim.
The other two entities are Asmodee, which focuses primarily on trading card and board games, and Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends, which will be stewards for The Lord of the Rings and Tomb Raider intellectual properties. That would include the Amazon/Embracer Lord of the Rings MMORPG we assume is still happening, but not the existing MMO Lord of the Rings Online, which is licensed under Daybreak’s Enad Global 7 umbrella and has nothing to do with Embracer.
Most of this news is aimed at shareholders and investors, which has been Embracer’s MO ever since it botched a $2B deal that led to a crash in stock value, the aforementioned restructuring process, and layoffs of thousands of employees in order to “always maximize shareholder value.” Shuffling of executives will occur through 2024 and 2025.
