If you're not familiar with the name of the Embracer Group just yet, you probably should be. Formerly known as Nordic Games, the company owns a selection of publishers including THQ Nordic, Gearbox, Coffee Stain, Koch Media, and Saber Interactive. Embracer has just announced another round of acquisitions, including the studios behind everything from Deep Rock Galactic to Duke Nukem.
Calling 3D Realms the 'Duke Nukem studio' is a bit weird in 2021, but the company does draw its lineage back to the Apogee Software which brought us the original run of Duke games. The rights to the series lie with Gearbox these days, while 3D Realms has been focusing on spiritual successors to classic first-person games by publishing titles like Ion Fury and Graven.
Either way, Duke's old and new masters are now under the same banner, as 3D Realms is one of eight studios getting acquired by Embracer Group, as the company has announced today. Ghost Ship Games, Slipgate Ironworks, Digixart, Force Field, Easy Trigger, CrazyLabs, and Grimfrost are also part of the round of acquisitions.
Slipgate Ironworks is currently at work on Graven, a spiritual successor to Hexen that 3D Realms was set to publish. Both Slipgate and 3D Realms will be part of Saber Interactive.
Ghost Ship Games, the developer of Deep Rock Galactic, is ing Coffee Stain, the publisher of Deep Rock Galactic. Coffee Stain is also picking up Easy Trigger, the studio behind the retro scrolling shooter, Huntdown.
Digixart, the studio behind indie games ranging from 11-11 Memories Retold to the Road 96 is ing Koch Media, as is VR studio Force Field.
CrazyLabs is a mobile publisher that appears to be ing Embracer separate to any of the company's existing brands. That also appears to be the case with Grimfrost, "an e-commerce specialist and a leading player with a global brand within high-quality Viking merchandise." Check out the website if you want to order some drinking horns or Viking street wear. (That's not an link or anything, I just think the phrase "Viking street wear" is very funny.)