Tomb Raider Sells – Square Enix Dedicates Itself to Blockchain investments

Barbra Venis May 15, 2022

Japanese video game company Square Enix has sold several of its developer studios. These include Crystal Dynamics, which is best known for the development of Tomb Raider. The company sold to invest more in new technologies such as blockchain technology.

On May 2, Square Enix announced the sale of its Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montréal and Square Enix Montréal studios. These were responsible for many of the well-known IPs. The companies went to the Swedish Embracer Group for $ 300 million. Tomb Raider is one of the most famous franchises within the gaming industry.

Square Enix, together with the three major Western game studios, is selling not only Tomb Raider, but also Deus Ex and Thief. According to the official approvals, the takeover is to be completed between July and September of this year.

The report states that the sale of the studios “enables the creation of new companies by driving investments in the areas of blockchain, AI and cloud“. The company also announced a partnership with double jump.Tokyo, which focus mainly on the creation of NFT content. This already happened over a year ago, but so far there have been no further updates in this regard.

The next Tomb Raider title is already in the planning

However, it could continue for Tomb Raider, because the studio Crystal Dynamics plans to work on another Tomb Raider title even after the takeover by Embracer.

”We are very pleased to welcome these studios to the Embracer Group,” co-founder and CEO Lars Wingefors said in a statement. “We recognize the fantastic intellectual property, world-class creative talents and outstanding achievements that have been repeatedly proven over the past decades. It was a great pleasure to meet the leadership teams and discuss future plans on how to realize their ambitions and become a big part of Embracer.”

Embracer is a large publishing group that operates more than 100 studios, such as Borderlands developers Gearbox, Saber Interactive and THQ Nordic. Furthermore, the comic and entertainment brand Dark Horse belongs to Embrace.

At the moment, we are seeing some changes in the video game industry in general. Sony buys Destiny developer Bungie for $ 3.6 billion, Take-Two took over FarmVille manufacturer Zynga for $ 12.7 billion, and not to forget: Microsoft acquires Activision Blizzard for nearly $69 billion. Furthermore, we are also seeing more and more efforts to integrate blockchain-based technologies. Ubisoft is another big company that already deals with blockchains and NFTs. Meanwhile, play-to-earn games are more successful than ever. Compared to last year, user activity in the niche has increased by a whole 2,000%.

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