Embracer Group, a group of companies including Gearbox, THQ Nordic and Deep Silver, announced today that they are in the process of getting Asmodee, perhaps the biggest name in board games, for $ 2.75 billion ($ 3.1 billion) ) to buy ).
Asmodee owns so many of the most popular and best-selling board game features of modern times, from Ticket to Catan to pandemic to 7 miracles to Exploding kitten. They also own Fantasy Flight, masters of licensed real estate like war of stars (X-wing, armada, Imperial attack), Arkham and Lord of the rings, and also have licenses for things like Pokémon, Harry Potter and Disney. So yes they are a very big deal when it comes to board games.
The plan, at least as described in the purchase announcement, is to buy Asmodee and then just leave it as it is, with Asmodee’s current CEO and management team in place and with the expectation that the company “will continue to operate as it did before the transaction, with no transaction-driven reorganization is expected “.
It is certainly an interesting time to look into board games. Although Embracer was drawn to Asmodee’s profits, it was also a challenging time for the industry. The pandemic hit board games heavy, and The resulting price peaks for shipping containers still make things difficult almost two years later.
During that time, Asmodee fired a slew of Fantasy Flight employees, closed the Fantasy Flight video game studio, and is known in the industry today as having the worst customer service imaginable. All of that sucks, but as long as the profits keep coming up and attracting a big sale like this, who cares, right?
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If the purchase is approved by all parties, Embracer says that “the transaction is expected to close in the first half of the 2022 calendar year”.
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