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Say goodbye to Google Stadia’s first party development studios. The streaming platform had also intended on developing their own first party titles, going as far as to hire some of the industry’s biggest vets. Game creation head Jade Raymond, the veteran producer who helped build Assassin’s Creed for Ubisoft and moved on to EA several years ago before leaving to run game creation at Stadia, will be exiting the company. Roughly 150 other devs who were hired by Google to make games are now left jobless as well. Google will continue to operate the Stadia gaming service and its $10 monthly Stadia Pro service. Stephen Totilo at Kotaku has the full story. The full announcement from Google can be found here.
The Embracer Group is merging with Gearbox Entertainment Company. Gearbox will become an operating group and wholly owned subsidiary of Embracer. Gearbox Founder and CEO Randy Pitchford will continue to lead Gearbox, and Randy Pitchford and the employees of Gearbox will jointly become a significant shareholder in Embracer. Gearbox is best known for the creation and development of the Borderlands games. The day one purchase price amounts to $363 million in total, on a cash and debt free basis, of which $175 million is paid in newly issued Embracer B shares. Subject to fulfilment of agreed financial and operational targets in the next six years, an additional consideration of maximum $1.015 billion may be paid. The full release can be found here.