Phil Rogers

The official Marvel Snap Twitter account claims that the popular collectible card game will “continue to operate and flourish in the future” despite the reports that its publisher, Nuverse, is facing “structural changes.”

This morning, the Embracer Group announced a major transformation of the company, which will be split into three separate publicly listed companies: Asmodee Group, Coffee Stain & Friends, and Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends. The existing Embracer Group listing on Nasdaq Stockholm will be renamed to Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends, and shares of Asmodee Group and Coffee Stain & Friends will be distributed as dividends to shareholders of Embracer Group. The listing and distribution of Asmodee Group shares is expected to occur within 12 months, and Coffee Stain & Friends shares during calendar year 2025.

Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors said that the current reduction in workforce at the company and across the industry is "something that everyone needs to get through," later adding that the group's strategy has been to cut the things that have "the lowest chance of success going forward" and to only keep "the most iconic studios."

A number of employees at the Embracer-owned studio Lost Boys Interactive have reported on LinkedIn and Twitter / X that they've been laid off from their jobs.

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New World Interactive has been hit with layoffs amid Embracer Group's restructuring program. 

New World Interactive, a subsidiary of Saber Interactive, is seeing layoffs. The studio is the latest one under the overall Embracer Group umbrella to face layoffs as part of the company’s major restructuring.

Saber Interactive subsidiary New World Interactive has experienced layoffs, affected by Embracer's ongoing restructuring program.

There's more bad news out of struggling gaming conglomerate Embracer: The company has confirmed that approximately 50 employees are being laid off from Chorus developer Fishlabs, and is also reportedly looking at closing TimeSplitters studio Free Radical Design completely.

Around 50 job cuts are expected to be made at German studio Fishlabs, as Embracer Group’s restructuring program continues. 

Three weeks after it was reported by VGC that Free Radical Design was allegedly being threatened with closure, Embracer Group’s CEO, Lars Wingefors, has reportedly acknowledged this threat within a company email (shared with VGC by anonymous sources). 

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Embracer Group’s interim chief strategy officer, Phil Rogers, has spoken about the company’s restructuring process, and has referred to the mass layoffs it’s caused as “agonizing” but “a necessary thing for us to hit our new and needed goals.”

Even in a year where the news cycle has been as dominated by layoffs in the games industry as 2023 has been, the scale at which Embracer Group has made cutbacks where its staff is concerned has taken many by surprise. The company instituted a restructuring plan earlier in the year after it failed to close a $2 billion deal with Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group, recently confirming that that had led to about 900 Embracer employees being laid off.

Embracer Group's restructuring process is still in its "early stages", and as such, we can expect "more cancellations, potentially some more closures" and some possible "management buyouts", according to Phil Rogers, CEO of the operating group that includes Crystal Dynamics and other Western studios previously owned by Square Enix.

Layoffs have been one of the defining events of the games industry this year, with thousands of jobs being cut across dozens of companies, all attempting to slash costs as the rapid economic growth of the pandemic years comes screeching to a halt. No company is more emblematic of both these extremes than Embracer Group. In the last few years, Embracer has embarked upon a frenzied spending spree, snapping up studios like Gearbox, Crystal Dynamics Eidos Montreal, and many more, all apparently to stack the decks in a deal with an unknown partner worth at least $2 billion.

The gaming industry has been experiencing a wave of layoffs, and Embracer has been hit particularly hard. In an interview with Game Informer, interim chief strategy officer Phil Rogers spoke a bit about why the layoffs have been occurring and the effect they have had.

The layoffs at troubled Swedish games giant Embracer Group are apparently "a necessary thing" for the company to meet its objectives.

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