Perfect World Entertainment & Cryptic Studios To Be Acquired By Embracer Group And Gearbox
Perfect World Entertainment and its subsidiaries, including Cryptic Studios, will soon be acquired by Swedish video game holding company Embracer Group AB, formerly Nordic Games, and Gearbox Entertainment. Once the $125 million deal goes through in February 2022, PWE will become a subsidiary of Gearbox and will continue to publish and develop games as they’ve done in the past with support from the latter.
As with most acquisitions, Embracer maintains that PWE and Cryptic will both remain independent. This was further confirmed by the Star Trek Online team when they revealed the acquisition this morning.
“In terms of the day to day operations of STO, very little will change, if anything at all,” said the team. “The team is not changing, the leadership of both STO and Cryptic Studios is not changing, and the team who was previously at PWE, now Gearbox, is unchanging as well. Basically, you should see very little difference once this deal goes through in how our game runs.”
“There are no plans to sunset Star Trek Online right now,” they added.
The official press release talks up Cryptic Studios and its portfolio of long-standing, and more importantly, highly-profitable MMORPGs, specifically Champions Online, Neverwinter, and Star Trek Online. On the flip side, the press release also dwells a bit on the significant losses that PWE incurred following the cancellation of Magic: Legends earlier this year and the big gap in the publisher’s release schedule.
The press release also revealed PWE’s upcoming release schedule which includes a new title for 2022 and five new ones by 2024. The 2022 game is likely the studio’s newly-announced Torchlight mobile game, Torchlight Infinite, that just opened closed beta sign-ups.
Embracer Group and Gearbox Entertainment merged in February 2021 in a $1.3 billion deal. Gearbox is known for several award-winning franchises, including Borderlands, Brothers in Arms, Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Halo, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and 007 James Bond.
