The turmoil within Embracer Group is continuing to roil as reports suggest the conglomerate is looking to sell Gearbox Entertainment, the developer behind the wildly successful Borderlands franchise.
The news today comes from Amy-Jo Crowley and Supantha Mukherjee of Reuters, who noted that the company is “working with Goldman Sachs and Aream & Co to explore a sale.” The potential buyers include two different international groups involved in the gaming sphere, according to the report.
Jason Schreier of Bloomberg also noted that it’s only been a couple of years since Embracer first acquired Gearbox for a cool $1.3 billion. It seems that Embracer’s failure to reach a deal with a Saudi Arabian group, reported in August to be Savvy Games Group, has led to the company going through a drastic restructuring.
Embracer has spent much of the last few years buying up as many studios and developers as it seemingly could, commanding a sizable portfolio. But the failure to make a deal with Savvy Games Group seems to have it offloading many of those properties just as quickly. Developers like Crystal Dynamics and Volition were both shuttered during Embracer’s restructuring and re-evaluation of it businesses, representing the studios behind games like Tomb Raider and Saints Row.
Gearbox, however, would easily be the largest property that Embracer would seek to offload. It’s unclear if the company will be able to recoup the huge valuation it made on Gearbox when it first purchased it.
The only major game Gearbox developed that was released while under the Embracer umbrella was Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, a spin-off game based on a popular DLC for Borderlands 2 that gives the series’ signature loot-and-shoot twist to Dungeons & Drag—ah, “Bunkers & Badasses,” as it were.
It’s not certain that Gearbox will be sold, however, as the potential sale is still in an exploratory phase. Still, with how many studios Embracer has been offloading lately, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Gearbox under new ownership—or as an independent studio once again—in the near future.
