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Embracer

Embracer Group sees net sales across PC/console and mobile games fall in FY2024/25

by admin May 23, 2025

Embracer Group has published its financial results for the fourth quarter ending March 2025, reporting declines across its PC/console and mobile segments on both the quarter and the fiscal year.

Full-year accounts also reveal Embracer has cut the number of its total game development projects from 141 to 108, and its headcount from 9692 to 7180. 5378 of those staff are game developers.

Here’s what you need to know:

The numbers

Q4 (3 months ended March 31, 2025)

Net sales: SEK 5.4 billion ($560.5 million, down 6% year-on-year)
PC/Console games: SEK 3 billion ($311.4 million, down 2% year-on-year)
Mobile: SEK 943 million ($97.9 million, down 31% year-on-year)
Entertainment & services: SEK 1.3 billion ($134.9 million, up 9% year-on-year)

Full-year (12 months ended March 31, 2025)

Net sales: SEK 22.3 billion ($2.32 billion, down 18% year-on-year)
PC/Console games: SEK 1.5 billion ($155.7 million, down 27% year-on-year)
Mobile: SEK 5.3 billion ($550 million, down 9% year-on-year)
Entertainment & services: SEK 6.5 billion ($674.6 million, down 7% year-on-year)

Embracer attributes its “solid” quarter to the performance of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, which reached three million copies sold and “maintained a highly positive player and critic reception.” It believes the DLC and free updates planned across the next 12 months will keep players “excited and deeply engaged.”

The firm makes a distinction between actual and organic growth, and states that though its mobile games sales fell by 31% between January and March 2025, its organic growth was 30%. It also states its PC/console games sales displayed an “organic growth” of 22%.

Embracer also noted it had made “significant progress in the process of transforming the Group,” with the divestment of Easybrain and Asmodee successfully completed, and Coffee Stain Group expected to be spun off by the end of the calendar year.

“In a solid ending to the year, net sales grew by 19% organically to SEK 5.4 billion, while Adjusted EBIT grew by 44% year-on-year pro forma to SEK 1.1 billion, with a free cash flow of SEK 1.0 billion in Q4,” said CEO Lars Wingefors.

“Kingdom Come: Deliverance II continued to perform in Q4, and reached 3 million sold copies after quarter-end. Organic growth within Mobile accelerated to 30% year-on-year. By the end of 2025, we now plan to spin off Coffee Stain Group, a group of leading community- driven game developers and publishers. We have a strong financial position, and we remain focused on enhancing efficiency and long-term resilience ahead of the spin-off.

Looking ahead

Right now, the group expects to release 76 games across FY 2025/26, “with a mix of new IPs, sequels, and remasters,” including Metal Eden, Gothic 1 Remake, Reanimal, Fellowship, Wreckreation, the next SpongeBob SquarePants game, Norse: Oath of Blood, and Deep Rock Galactic: Rogue Core. It also makes explcit mention of two AAA games; Killing Floor 3 – which is now scheduled for Q2 – and Marvel 1943: Rise of the Hydra, which is scheduled to release sometime in the 25/26 fiscal year. Embracer “expect[s] Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra to drive notable revenues but to have lower margins due to shared economics with several other partners.”

A previously mentioned third AAA game has been delayed to 2026/27 as management takes the “prudent view” that “the game will likely need a few more quarters to polish.” An additional nine AAA games are planned across 2027/28 and 2028/29 financial years.

Earlier today, we reported THQ Nordic’s studio Campfire Cabal has returned after being shuttered in 2023. Announcing the news, the developer said it had “never shut down” despite closing as part of THQ Nordic’s parent company Embracer’s restructuring efforts.

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May 23, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Campfire Cabal returns after being shuttered by Embracer

by admin May 22, 2025

THQ Nordic’s studio Campfire Cabal has returned after being shuttered in 2023.

Announcing the news in a blog post, the developer said it had “never shut down” despite closing as part of THQ Nordic’s parent company Embracer’s restructuring efforts.

“We are finally ready to reveal that Campfire Cabal was never shut down,” it said.

“Though we did have to say goodbye to many of our colleagues, the studio survived and a compact team continued the project we had started in 2022.”

This project is the next game in the Expedition series, and by the end of March 2025 it had been “given the green light to scale back up and transition into full production.”

Campfire Cabal also confirmed that it patched Expeditions: Rome in 2024 despite being “radio silent” since the studio’s initial closure.

“If you follow the insider news, you are aware that it’s been a rough couple of years in the game industry,” the developer continued. “Investment dried up, studios shut down, countless developers lost their jobs, and games were cancelled left and right.

“We are extremely grateful that there were people within the group who fought to keep us alive through the turmoil, and that we can now emerge on the other side with renewed vigour.”

THQ Nordic launched Campfire Cabal in September 2022, comprised of veterans from the Expeditions franchise.

By August 2023, Embracer informed THQ Nordic needed to close Campfire Cabal due to restructuring.

“We want to make it clear that our management and the rest of the team have not given up on Campfire Cabal yet, and neither have our friends at THQ Nordic,” the developer wrote on LinkedIn at the time.

“We are still pursuing our options for finding a good resolution to this situation, and THQ Nordic has been very supportive throughout this difficult time.”

It concluded: “This does not mean that it’s over for us as a studio. We’re extremely proud of how our team has come together to keep the campfire burning, and of the commitment and camaraderie everyone has demonstrated since the news broke.”

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May 22, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

A studio gutted by Embracer have come back to life and are working on a new RPG

by admin May 21, 2025

One of the many game studios smashed to pieces by Embracer Group has come back to life. Campfire Cabal, which was seemingly shut down in 2023 as part of their parent corporation’s scorched earth “restructuring” policy, have crawled out of the grave to announce they’re still around and, in fact, “never stopped working”. They’ve been making a new game in the Expeditions series of historical RPGs, and have been given “the green light to scale back up and transition into full production.”

“We are finally ready to reveal that Campfire Cabal was never shut down,” say the studio in a post on their website. What happened, they say, is that the THQ-owned studio were ordered to close by Embracer two years ago. But some agreement was reached to keep the company going with a reduced headcount, and they instead cut an unknown number of employees from payroll.

“Though we did have to say goodbye to many of our colleagues, the studio survived and a compact team continued the project we had started in 2022. At the end of March of 2025, we received the green light to scale back up and transition into full production.”

That project is a new game in the Expeditions series of RPGs, which includes the classical centurion stomping of Expeditions: Rome, the top-down shield-battering of Expeditions: Viking, and gunpowdery land-grabbing of Expeditions: Conquistador. The studio aren’t saying much more about the new game, though. Only that it’ll be “set in a new period of our history and in a new part of the world for the series”. Expeditions: Mongol, anyone? Expeditions: Pirate? Expeditions: Islamic Golden Age? I guess we’ll find out.

Expeditions: Rome had some repetitive quirks but was a “seriously good – and lovingly detailed – romp through centurion times,” said Nate in our review. And Expeditions: Conquistador was called “very fine” by Adam, who wrote in his review that some parts were a chore, but “the focus on stories and characters means that there is almost always at least one interesting plot on the boil”.

You should know, however, that Campfire Cabal aren’t the original studio who made the older Expeditions games. That would be Logic Artists, who were subsumed and digested by blockchain bullshit peddlars Dynasty Studios. But the Cabal have since become custodians of the series under rights-holders THQ. As with many creative studios, it’s a bit of a Ship of Theseus situation, somewhat complicated by a round of layoffs and this subsequent reappearance. We’ll have to wait and see how the next entry carries the torch.

Even if you aren’t that interested in the RPGs, the “revival” of a seemingly shuttered studio is interesting in a wider sense. It could be seen as a hopeful sprout of green emerging from a blackened earth laid bare by years of seemingly endless layoffs. Or it could simply be the re-emergence of a scarred and injured body from a bloody-watered moat, a studio bravely limping on in spite of the brutal overlord that threw them in there, alongside a bunch of other bodies.

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May 21, 2025 0 comments

Campfire Cabal "Sunstone Teaser" image - hand-drawn tall ship in high seas

Product Reviews

THQ Nordic studio that was set to be closed in 2023 somehow escaped the Embracer death spiral and is now working on a new RPG

by admin May 20, 2025

This is a bit of a weird one: Two years after announcing its planned closure in the aftermath of the Embracer Group’s $2 billion implosion, Campfire Cabal revealed today that it “was never shut down” at all, and that it is in fact working on a new addition to the Expeditions series of historical RPGs.

“If you follow the insider news, you are aware that it’s been a rough couple of years in the game industry,” the studio wrote. “Investment dried up, studios shut down, countless developers lost their jobs, and games were cancelled left and right.”

That’s putting it mildly. A quick catch-up on how we got here: Campfire Cabal was founded in September 2022 under Embracer’s THQ Nordic label to “focus on high-quality, narrative-driven RPGs.” But less than a year later a massive investment deal fell through at the last minute, and Embracer’s wings were suddenly and brutally clipped: Hundreds of people were laid off (although none of the executives responsible for the mess, of course) and numerous studios closed, including—apparently—Campfire Cabal.