Square Enix, the day before yesterday, in their Press Release (PDF):
[We] today signed a share transfer agreement with Sweden-based Embracer Group AB concerning the divestiture of select overseas studios and IP. The company’s primary assets to be divested in the transaction are group subsidiaries such as Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Interactive and IP such as Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief, and Legacy of Cain.
[corporate jargon] In addition, the transaction enables the launch of new businesses by moving forward with investments in fields including blockchain, AI, and the cloud. [more corporate jargon]
Well, I’m not an analyst. But if you ask me, selling off some of your jewels in a fire sale*, not because they made a loss but, purportedly, because the profits they made were “below expectations,” to a publishing group that already owns more than a hundred studios and a kaboodle of other media companies, with the expressed intention of investing in cryptoshit, then I’d say there are some invisible pipelines under the hood that will funnel staggering amounts of money over time into some select investors’ fathomless pockets.
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*Compare the estimated price tag of $300 million for all these studios and IPs to this year’s other buying sprees—Sony’s acquisition of Bungie/Destiny for $3.6 billion; Take-Two’s acquisition of Zynga/FarmVille for $12.7 billion; or Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard for just under $70 billion. Plus, Embracer’s own recent acquisitions of Asmodee Games for $3.1 billion and Gearbox for $1.3 billion. Compared to these, what Embracer payed for all these studios and IPs is the equivalent of the tip money you put aside for pizza and package deliveries.