Embracer CEO Announces He's Stepping Down From His Current…

Summary

Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors will step down from his position in the coming months.
Leadership duties of Embracer Group will be assigned to Crystal Dynamics CEO Phil Rogers.
Wingefors will remain at Embracer as executive chair of the company's board.

Lars Wingefors, the long-standing CEO and co-founder of Embracer Group, has revealed that he will step down from his role later this year. The leadership baton will be handed to Crystal Dynamics-Eidos CEO Phil Rogers, who is also the current deputy CEO of Embracer.

Wingefors' decision comes after a tumultuous few years at the helm of the Swedish gaming giant. Embracer Group experienced explosive growth through an aggressive acquisition strategy that started in 2019, with the company buying up major game studios like Borderlands developer Gearbox Software, Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 developer Saber Interactive, Tomb Raider custodian Crystal Dynamics, and more. However, after a $2 billion deal between Saudi Arabia-backed Savvy Games Group and Embracer Group collapsed in 2023, a massive restructuring phase was initiated for the latter, including mass layoffs, studio closures, and spinoffs that entirely reshaped the company's structure.

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By Priye Rai

Just over a year ago, Embracer Group split up into three separate companies, but the leadership reshuffling efforts evidently didn't end there. Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors will step down in August 2025 to focus on the company's strategic direction, mergers and acquisitions, and capital allocation as executive chair of the board. He will also be appointed director of the board of Coffee Stain Group, a division set to be spun off from Embracer into a standalone company by the end of 2025. Coffee Stain Group will comprise over 250 developers across studios like Ghost Ship Games and Tuxedo Labs, and Embracer financial director Erik Sunnerdahl will take over as CFO of the newly-independent group.

Embracer Group to Be Led by Crystal Dynamics CEO

Phil Rogers (second image) joined Embracer in 2022 following the acquisition of Eidos Montreal and will take over the CEO role from Wingefors. Rogers also previously led both Crystal Dynamics and Plaion, and his promotion alludes to a strategic pivot for Embracer as it attempts to stabilize after shedding loads of assets and thousands of employees. To that end, Embracer's recent restructuring resulted in a whopping 1,400 job cuts and the cancelation of 29 unannounced projects. Notably, Saints Row (2022) developer Volition and Free Radical Design were both shuttered, while Gearbox Software and Saber Interactive were sold off.

Many have criticized Embracer for the severe layoffs that happened due to the company's mismanagement of the Savvy Games Group deal, and rightfully so. Thankfully, these leadership shake-ups seem to indicate a rightsizing for the Swedish company, which still holds the rights to over 450 franchises and employs over 7,000 staff across 73 internal game studios. One can only hope that Embracer's restructuring efforts will help sustain them.

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