Saber Interactive boss defends Embracer's acquisition strategy after "bittersweet" split
"Give Lars a break."
Saber Interactive CEO Matthew Karch has defended Embracer's acquisition strategy, following its split from the Swedish conglomerate.
Last month Embracer sold its Saber assets and the companies separated. In a new interview with IGN, Karch said it was his suggestion that Saber leave Embracer, which he described as "bittersweet".
Embracer is undergoing a restructuring programme after a period of mass acquisition - Karch compares the company to Pac-man "gobbling up everything on the screen" - and has laid off eight percent of staff. Yet despite garnering a negative reputation in the industry as a result, Karch remains on "very good terms" with Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors.
"I was walking around GDC getting congratulated by people and having people telling me that Embracer is the evil empire," said Karch. "Embracer is as small-town and homegrown of a large organisation as you're ever going to see. It's not a company which wants to spit out a thousand Lord of the Rings games regardless of whether or not those Lord of the Rings games are going to hurt the licence. That's not the way Embracer operates. It's not the way Lars operates. He loves IP. He loves games. He loves game developers. He got to start in comics. God knows how long ago, and he's just a good human being, and he cares about his people."
Karch claims the "market lost patience", which has resulted in the huge amount of layoffs at Embracer. "I don't think the layoffs that Embracer incurred to any larger or degree than they incurred anywhere else, but Embracer, because it acquired so quickly, has gotten a reputation because it's had to lay off people quickly," said Karch.
He continued: "You could state that a lot of the jobs that were lost were jobs that wouldn't have otherwise been created...Some of the studios that we're taking with us would never have been able to grow the way they've grown. No way. We've created a lot of jobs, and they may have, especially in this market downturn, been out of business in any event because capital has just dried up, not just at Embracer, but everywhere. There was a long period of time when nobody was investing at all.
"...I think you can blame Lars for maybe being a little bit naive that this gravy train would just continue. But I think now you could admire them for making tough decisions and doing whatever they can to preserve as much of what they've built as they can in a fair and equitable way...I think some people saw those acquisitions and were annoyed by Embracer when they were acquiring. I remember a lot of negative comments about them gobbling everything up. And so now they're a little bit gleeful...which I don't think is entirely equitable. But give Lars a break or have somebody give him a break. Tell the world that I said they need to give this guy a break."
Considering the future of Saber, Karch described AAA development as "very risky" and believes instead Saber can "create AAA, but not at a AAA budget".
As such, Saber will sit between low-budget independent development and high-budget AAA as a "middle market" publisher, citing the recent success of Helldivers 2 as a key example to follow.
Karch believes the huge budgets and long development times of AAA games aren't sustainable. "I think that there's going to be a real shortage of game content over the coming few years," he said. "You've seen how many layoffs there's been, you see how many games have gotten killed. But [Saber has] a lot of good projects going on that I'm proud of and that I feel really, really strongly about."
Following the split from Embracer, Saber confirmed a number of games remain in development. That includes the Knights of the Old Republic remake, which Karch described as "alive and well" despite troubled development.