Game company purchases Lord of the Rings IP

Embracer Group announced the acquisition among several others, including three game studios and one game distributor.

Embracer Group, a game and media investment group, recently announced a slew of acquisitions, including the entirety of Tolkien’s estate. The entirety of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit franchises were sold for an undisclosed amount.

The company announced its acquisitions earlier today, which included two game studios — Tripwire Studios, which created the Killing Floor games, and Tuxedo Labs, which created the game Teardown. The acquisitions also included Limited Run Games, which is a video game distribution company that releases digital games in physical formats, such as cartridges for the Nintendo Switch.

The biggest news, however, is the Tolkien estate acquisition. This isn’t just the right to make a new video game, or a new movie — this is the entire intellectual property rights to everything Middle-Earth related. While it is unclear how much the Tolkien estate was sold for, it could not have been cheap.

The deal includes anything and everything involving Middle-earth, including the new Rings of Power show. Picture: Amazon Studios

Embracer Group has been vacuuming up companies left and right. In February of last year, the company announced its acquisition of Gearbox Entertainment, developer of the popular Borderlands series. Also in 2021, Embracer acquired Dark Horse Comics and finished its acquisition of Saber Interactive.

This year, Embracer announced its buyout of multiple game studios from Japanese publisher Square Enix, including Eidos, Crystal Dynamics, and Square Enix Montreal. The sales came as a result of Square Enix tending fears that the studios “cannibalised” Japanese game sales.

The consolidation of game studios is happening everywhere else as well. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire Activision Blizzard, with a final purchase price of nearly $100 billion AUD making it the largest video game merger in history. This is pending approval from regulatory agencies worldwide and has led to some companies objecting, saying that they cannot compete with Call of Duty.

Meanwhile, Ubisoft, a French publisher and developer, is entertaining investment opportunities from Chinese gaming company Tencent. Tencent is currently the world’s largest company in the video game industry, with investments and holdings in areas ranging from Supercell (makers of Clash of Clans) to Riot Games (creators of League of Legends.)

Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF.