Embracer Group continues to “optimize”. Free Radical Design will be closed, Fishlabs will lose half of its employees
Embracer Group continues to “optimize” its portfolio by closing and downsizing studios that the Swedish holding actively bought in 2018-2022. This time, Free Radical Design and Fishlabs were not so lucky.
The British Free Radical Design, the authors of TimeSplitters 1/2 and Second Sight, which was closed in 2014 and revived in 2021, didn’t even have time to show their new game, the TimeSplitters triquel. The studio will be closed after Christmas.
German Fishlabs, the authors of a series of space simulators for mobile platforms Galaxy on Fire and a good space sim Chorus (2021), is not being closed, but 50 out of 95 studio employees will be laid off. The unannounced Fishlabs project will be canceled.
Embracer Group made its last major acquisition in January 2013, and then things went bad. As part of the restructuring, the company intends to reduce its debt to below 10 billion kronor (about $930 million) and has already laid off more than 900 employees.
Recently, it became known that Embracer is considering selling Gearbox Entertainment, the studio behind the Borderlands series.