Update: 08/26/2022: Embracer Group has now completed its purchase of Crystal Dynamics, Square Enix Montréal, and Eidos-Montréal following a near-four month acquisition process.

The colossal video games holding company announced the update on its website, saying plainly that "all conditions for the transaction, including regulatory approvals, have now been fulfilled and the transaction may be completed. Embracer has, therefore, today completed the acquisition."

It can now shift its focus to acquiring the several other companies it has since purchased, including the owner of The Lord of the Rings and Chivalry developer Tripwire Interactive.

Original Story: Embracer Group has entered into an agreement to acquire Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montréal, Square Enix Montréal, and a "catalogue of IPs including Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief, Legacy of Kain and more than 50 back-catalogue games from Square Enix Holdings" for $300 million.

Embracer shared the news in a press release, saying this acquisition includes roughly 1,100 employees across three studios and eight global locations. The deal, if it goes through, is expected to close during Q2 of Embracer's financial year 2022/2023.

”We are thrilled to welcome these studios into the Embracer Group. We recognize the fantastic IP, world class creative talent, and track record of excellence that have been demonstrated time and again over the past decades. It has been a great pleasure meeting the leadership teams and discussing future plans for how they can realize their ambitions and become a great part of Embracer,” says Lars Wingefors, Co-founder and Group CEO, Embracer Group.

”Embracer is the best kept secret in gaming: a massive, decentralized collection of entrepreneurs whom we are thrilled to become a part of today. It is the perfect fit for our ambitions: make high-quality games, with great people, sustainably, and grow our existing franchises to their best versions ever. Embracer allows us to forge new partnerships across all media to maximize our franchises’ potential and live our dreams of making extraordinary entertainment,” says Phil Rogers, Square Enix America and Europe CEO.

Once this deal goes through, Embracer will have more than 14,000 employees, 10,000 game developers, and 124 internal studios. It also confirmed it has more than 230 games in development at those studios, and more than 30 are AAA titles.

This news comes shortly after Crystal Dynamics announced it was developing a brand-new Tomb Raider game on Unreal Engine 5. No further details were given, but the team did say it was planning to "push the envelope of fidelity."

Crystal Dynamics is also the studio behind Marvel's Avengers and it has been helping Microsoft's The Initiative develop the new Perfect Dark game.

Eidos Montréal is the studio behind Thief 4, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and more, and it is "working on a host of AAA projects including both new releases from beloved franchises and original IP."

Square Enix Montréal is responsible for such games as Hitman GO, Tomb Raider GO, and Deus Ex GO, and it will continue to work in the mobile space building games based on AAA IP.

Embracer is no stranger to acquisitions, as it has been undergoing a rapid expansion over the past few years. Some of the other companies it has acquired/owns are Dark Horse Comics, 3D Realms, Ghost Ship Games, Gearbox, THQ Nordic, Saber Interactive, Koch Media, and many more.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

A third-person action game is on the way from Creative Assembly, the developer renowned for its Total War strategy games including Shogun: Total War and the more recent Total War Saga: Troy.

Creative Assembly also develops the Games Workshop series Total War: Warhammer - with the most recent Warhammer III arriving earlier this year - but it's not averse to non-strategy games either.

The new project is said to “sit alongside Total War, Hyenas and the studio’s other yet-to-be announced project”, and in an official announcement, the studio said it’s looking for developers “with experience working on third-person titles using the Unreal 5 engine”.

Creative Assembly may be best known for its strategy offerings, but it’s also dabbled with action-adventure before – notably with the survival horror game, Alien: Isolation. But will the new game be based on an existing franchise?

Unfortunately, details are pretty scarce. Aside from revealing the existence of this new action game, and teasing its third-person nature, there are no other details about what the game might entail.

If you’re a fan of the Total War series, don’t worry – Creative Assembly may be branching out, but they’ll remain dedicated to the long-running strategy series, too. “CA Sofia will also continue to remain home to a dedicated Total War team working on future releases,” the studio confirmed.

Creative Assembly’s most recent game, Total War: Warhammer III was well-received by gamers and critics, scoring a hefty 9/10 in IGN’s own review. “Total War: Warhammer 3’s single-player mode presents us with a tense, challenging, multilayered campaign driven along by a compelling story and a memorable cast of rivals," we said.

Want to read more about Creative Assembly? Check out our multiplayer review of Total War: Warhammer III as well as what to expect from its upcoming game, Hyenas.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

A third-person action game is on the way from Creative Assembly, the developer renowned for its Total War strategy games including Shogun: Total War and the more recent Total War Saga: Troy.

Creative Assembly also develops the Games Workshop series Total War: Warhammer - with the most recent Warhammer III arriving earlier this year - but it's not averse to non-strategy games either.

The new project is said to “sit alongside Total War, Hyenas and the studio’s other yet-to-be announced project”, and in an official announcement, the studio said it’s looking for developers “with experience working on third-person titles using the Unreal 5 engine”.

Creative Assembly may be best known for its strategy offerings, but it’s also dabbled with action-adventure before – notably with the survival horror game, Alien: Isolation. But will the new game be based on an existing franchise?

Unfortunately, details are pretty scarce. Aside from revealing the existence of this new action game, and teasing its third-person nature, there are no other details about what the game might entail.

If you’re a fan of the Total War series, don’t worry – Creative Assembly may be branching out, but they’ll remain dedicated to the long-running strategy series, too. “CA Sofia will also continue to remain home to a dedicated Total War team working on future releases,” the studio confirmed.

Creative Assembly’s most recent game, Total War: Warhammer III was well-received by gamers and critics, scoring a hefty 9/10 in IGN’s own review. “Total War: Warhammer 3’s single-player mode presents us with a tense, challenging, multilayered campaign driven along by a compelling story and a memorable cast of rivals," we said.

Want to read more about Creative Assembly? Check out our multiplayer review of Total War: Warhammer III as well as what to expect from its upcoming game, Hyenas.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

HBO has confirmed that Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon will return for a second season.

The news comes after just one episode of the show - set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones - premiered on HBO and HBO Max, but isn't entirely surprising given the success of its predecessor.

The first episode, which aired on August 21, was the largest premiere in HBO Max history as close to 10 million people tuned in on opening night. Ironically this proved to be a little too much for the streaming service, as several thousand users were left unable to watch due to the app crashing.

While it's unlikely the numbers will stay as high for the entirety of the ten episode season, Game of Thrones fans in for the long haul will at least have more House of the Dragon to look forward to thanks to the Season 2 confirmation.

It's the first Game of Thrones spin-off to make it to TV, with several other ideas pitched, developed, and scrapped - including a Long Night prequel that HBO spent $30 million on.

In our 8/10 review of the first episode, IGN said: "House Of The Dragon makes it feel like Game Of Thrones is back – now with extra dragons – and that’s a very good thing."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

HBO has confirmed that Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon will return for a second season.

The news comes after just one episode of the show - set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones - premiered on HBO and HBO Max, but isn't entirely surprising given the success of its predecessor.

The first episode, which aired on August 21, was the largest premiere in HBO Max history as close to 10 million people tuned in on opening night. Ironically this proved to be a little too much for the streaming service, as several thousand users were left unable to watch due to the app crashing.

While it's unlikely the numbers will stay as high for the entirety of the ten episode season, Game of Thrones fans in for the long haul will at least have more House of the Dragon to look forward to thanks to the Season 2 confirmation.

It's the first Game of Thrones spin-off to make it to TV, with several other ideas pitched, developed, and scrapped - including a Long Night prequel that HBO spent $30 million on.

In our 8/10 review of the first episode, IGN said: "House Of The Dragon makes it feel like Game Of Thrones is back – now with extra dragons – and that’s a very good thing."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Update 08/26/2022, 09:00: USA Today's report claiming that Amazon would today make an offer to buy Electronic Arts (EA) has been retracted, with the journalist behind the article also expressing doubt over its accuracy.

The original report was updated multiple times in the hours after CNBC disputed its reporting, slowly but surely stepping away from its fairly explicit declaration that Amazon would make EA an offer.

"Earlier today, GLHF - a gaming/e-sports outlet and content partner of [USA Today's] For The Win - ran a version of this story on our website that violated our editorial standards regarding the use of unnamed and unvetted sources," the page now reads.

Kirk McKeand, the journalist behind the article, also said on Twitter: "If you get something wrong in games journalism, it's a bit like when you work behind a bar and drop a pint glass, and everyone cheers. Except, instead of cheering, they chuck more pint glasses at you."

He continued: "Also, CNBC said 'it isn't happening today', which isn't the same as 'it isn't happening'. And if I turn out to be wrong, then I was wrong. It happens. It's the first time it's happened to me with a report like this, but it was bound to happen eventually."

Original Story: Video game industry media was sent into a tailspin earlier today, August 26, after a USA Today report claimed Amazon was planning to make an offer to purchase publishing giant EA. Conflicting reports have now emerged from CNBC, however, that say there are no acquisition plans in place.

USA Today's report arrived from Swedish press agency Good Luck Have Fun, who claimed its sources were aware of an imminent formal offer from Amazon to acquire the FIFA 23 and Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order publisher.

Not long after, however, CNBC anchor David Faber said on air (below) that there are currently no plans from Amazon to acquire EA. "I have talked to some people who would actually know if there was something going on, and they say there's nothing going on," Faber said. "These are people who would be involved."

Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts, sources tell CNBC's @DavidFaber. Shares of $EA surged earlier on a report citing a "rumor." pic.twitter.com/k7wk0Fy7xv

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) August 26, 2022

EA shares had climbed 15% in premarket trading following the USA Today report but have since lowered, and at time of writing are up around 6%.

EA have been at the centre of several acquisition rumours in recent months as the video game industry overall has seen them become commonplace. EA CEO Andrew Wilson said earlier in August that the company would be open to the possibility of being acquired but it also that EA couldn't be "in a stronger position as a standalone company".

Amazon has told IGN that it does not comment on speculation, while EA is yet to respond to our request for comment.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

While the new trailer for Team Ninja’s highly anticipated Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty contains actual gameplay for the first time, there’s still a lot we don’t know about Team Ninja’s new Soulsborne title. Most notably, after making two installments of the Nioh series, the team decided to go in a somewhat new direction - and we wanted to know how it differs.

IGN sat down with producer Fumihiko Yasuda and development producer Masaaki Yamagiwa to find out how Wo Long is different from the developer’s popular past series. The most obvious thing that sets Wo Long apart from Team Ninja’s previous efforts is its setting, and it seems that this new location will differentiate Wo Long from Nioh in multiple ways.

“Being set in China, we were able to create locations of much greater scale than in Nioh, which was set in Japan,” Yasuda says. “Even something like a castle is much bigger than before, and exploration has become more vertical because the player character in Wo Long can jump,” he adds.

While Nioh’s combat was based around ninja skills and samurai swords, Wo Long’s combat is all about Chinese martial arts.

“Gameplay-wise, the biggest difference is an emphasis on speed,” Yasuda continues. “There’s no stamina gauge like you had in Nioh, so you’ll constantly be confronted by a multitude of situations in which you need to react immediately. You can choose to play more aggressively, but there are also a lot of new ways to evade enemy attacks.”

The absence of a stamina gauge and the faster-paced combat reminded us of FromSoftware’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, but Yasuda and Yamagiwa tell us that for them the increased tempo seemed only natural for a game focused on Chinese martial arts.

Yamagiwa says that movements of actual Chinese martial arts practitioners were implemented through motion capture, but that these were adjusted to match the game’s fictitious action.

The new trailer shows the player character using a wide array of weapon types, ranging from a spear to a longsword and a dual sword. Both the weapons’ designs and attack patterns are noticeably different in flow when compared with Nioh’s more grounded action.

“There will be more than 10 weapon types to choose from in the final game,” Yamagiwa says.

Systemwise, Wo Long’s biggest game changer might be its Morale ranking system. In Wo Long, both the player and enemies have a Morale rank. If the enemy is of a higher rank than you, it will be more difficult to defeat them. The player can raise their rank by defeating enemies, while dying will result in a degradation. Rankings of enemies are also affected by confrontation with the player. Yamagiwa says that this new dynamic is a fundamental aspect of Wo Long’s level design.

“New Wizardry Spells will be unlocked when you reach a higher rank, which work like magic spells,” Yamagiwa tells us. “Divine Beasts can be summoned to aid you during battle as well,” he continues. “In the trailer you can see the Vermilion Bird being summoned, which is one of China’s legendary beasts. You will befriend more of these divine beasts as you progress through the story.”

As implied by Bruce Lee’s famous quote “Don’t think, feel,” Chinese martial arts are all about intuition. It seems as though Team Ninja aspires to faithfully incorporate that philosophy into Wo Long.

For more on Wo Long, be sure to read our exclusive Summer Game Fest interview.

Esra Krabbe is an editor at IGN Japan.

While the new trailer for Team Ninja’s highly anticipated Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty contains actual gameplay for the first time, there’s still a lot we don’t know about Team Ninja’s new Soulsborne title. Most notably, after making two installments of the Nioh series, the team decided to go in a somewhat new direction - and we wanted to know how it differs.

IGN sat down with producer Fumihiko Yasuda and development producer Masaaki Yamagiwa to find out how Wo Long is different from the developer’s popular past series. The most obvious thing that sets Wo Long apart from Team Ninja’s previous efforts is its setting, and it seems that this new location will differentiate Wo Long from Nioh in multiple ways.

“Being set in China, we were able to create locations of much greater scale than in Nioh, which was set in Japan,” Yasuda says. “Even something like a castle is much bigger than before, and exploration has become more vertical because the player character in Wo Long can jump,” he adds.

While Nioh’s combat was based around ninja skills and samurai swords, Wo Long’s combat is all about Chinese martial arts.

“Gameplay-wise, the biggest difference is an emphasis on speed,” Yasuda continues. “There’s no stamina gauge like you had in Nioh, so you’ll constantly be confronted by a multitude of situations in which you need to react immediately. You can choose to play more aggressively, but there are also a lot of new ways to evade enemy attacks.”

The absence of a stamina gauge and the faster-paced combat reminded us of FromSoftware’s Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, but Yasuda and Yamagiwa tell us that for them the increased tempo seemed only natural for a game focused on Chinese martial arts.

Yamagiwa says that movements of actual Chinese martial arts practitioners were implemented through motion capture, but that these were adjusted to match the game’s fictitious action.

The new trailer shows the player character using a wide array of weapon types, ranging from a spear to a longsword and a dual sword. Both the weapons’ designs and attack patterns are noticeably different in flow when compared with Nioh’s more grounded action.

“There will be more than 10 weapon types to choose from in the final game,” Yamagiwa says.

Systemwise, Wo Long’s biggest game changer might be its Morale ranking system. In Wo Long, both the player and enemies have a Morale rank. If the enemy is of a higher rank than you, it will be more difficult to defeat them. The player can raise their rank by defeating enemies, while dying will result in a degradation. Rankings of enemies are also affected by confrontation with the player. Yamagiwa says that this new dynamic is a fundamental aspect of Wo Long’s level design.

“New Wizardry Spells will be unlocked when you reach a higher rank, which work like magic spells,” Yamagiwa tells us. “Divine Beasts can be summoned to aid you during battle as well,” he continues. “In the trailer you can see the Vermilion Bird being summoned, which is one of China’s legendary beasts. You will befriend more of these divine beasts as you progress through the story.”

As implied by Bruce Lee’s famous quote “Don’t think, feel,” Chinese martial arts are all about intuition. It seems as though Team Ninja aspires to faithfully incorporate that philosophy into Wo Long.

For more on Wo Long, be sure to read our exclusive Summer Game Fest interview.

Esra Krabbe is an editor at IGN Japan.

D-Pad Studio is not known for rushing its work. Its second game, 2016’s Owlboy, took the team ten years to make. It was restarted multiple times due to studio concerns about fan expectations in the wake of a new renaissance for Metroidvanias, various life events, and director Simon Stafsnes Andersen’s acknowledged struggles with depression. And now, D-Pad is on the cusp of releasing a game that’s taken them even longer to complete: Vikings on Trampolines, which has been in the works for 20 years.

Speaking to IGN at Gamescom, creator Jo-Remi Madsen says that their bouncing battler was conceived when he was about 14 years old, playing games like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. with his sister. “She would always give up,” Madsen says, because even though she understood how to play, she couldn’t figure out the controller and found his explanations of how it worked boring. So he began working on a game that only used the joystick to play: a core concept that Vikings on Trampolines still rests upon in 2022.

So how did the vikings end up on trampolines? When Madsen programmed the earliest version of the game, he didn’t know how to make characters walk yet. But he could make them jump. “I’m not an animator,” he says, “so if I just make them bounce, I don’t have to animate anything.”

Madsen’s prototype served its purpose, and for about ten years, Vikings on Trampolines was largely forgotten. But when he partnered with Andersen at D-Pad Studio, Madsen shook off the cobwebs and showed it off to his new business partner. Andersen loved it. The team made a new prototype of the concept that turned it into a Smash-like brawler, and that prototype won the first-ever Nordic Games Indie Sensation Award at the Nordic Game Awards in 2011. A promising start for a new indie game studio.

And…then it went back into the vault again. D-Pad Studios was initially focused on Owlboy, which ended up taking much longer than any of them thought it would. So for almost another decade, Vikings on Trampolines lay forgotten again until Owlboy was complete, at which point D-Pad was able to shake off the dust and take one more crack at it.

But Vikings on Trampolines’ hurdles were not yet all cleared. The version that we’re seeing now in 2022 was first intended as a competitive couch game, where the titular vikings bounce around stages on trampolines and try to knock each other off the trampolines onto the ground. But not long after D-Pad started work on Vikings, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, dampening hopes that such a game would be successful.

So D-Pad pivoted again. The competitive mode stayed at the core of Vikings on Trampolines, but the team iterated on the idea to flesh out a full adventure mode, complete with a story, villains, minigames, and boss battles. And this, then, is the Vikings on Trampolines that we saw this week at Gamescom: a 20-year saga at last nearing its conclusion, though it’s still waiting on a formal release date.

And yes, you can still play it with one hand. Andersen quips that the one-handed setup is perfect for parties “so you can drink beer” with your other hand while you play, and Madsen confirms the team has had people who were “very inebriated” beat them at the game before. But more importantly, they continue, what initially began as a gameplay novelty turned into a way to make Vikings on Trampolines available to many people who may otherwise struggle to play a couch competitive game like this. Because it only requires use of one joystick, it’s easier to play for those who struggle to hit lots of buttons, or people who may be unfamiliar with games and don’t want to deal with complex controls – perfect, in fact, to play with a less-experienced sibling like Madsen did all those years ago.

We got a hands-on preview of Vikings on Trampolines at Gamescom 2022, calling it “a blast in the right environment” that “shines brightest in multiplayer,” though the adventure mode has plenty of promise too. You can catch more Vikings on Trampolines and everything else we’re checking out at Gamescom in our roundup and ongoing live show.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

D-Pad Studio is not known for rushing its work. Its second game, 2016’s Owlboy, took the team ten years to make. It was restarted multiple times due to studio concerns about fan expectations in the wake of a new renaissance for Metroidvanias, various life events, and director Simon Stafsnes Andersen’s acknowledged struggles with depression. And now, D-Pad is on the cusp of releasing a game that’s taken them even longer to complete: Vikings on Trampolines, which has been in the works for 20 years.

Speaking to IGN at Gamescom, creator Jo-Remi Madsen says that their bouncing battler was conceived when he was about 14 years old, playing games like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. with his sister. “She would always give up,” Madsen says, because even though she understood how to play, she couldn’t figure out the controller and found his explanations of how it worked boring. So he began working on a game that only used the joystick to play: a core concept that Vikings on Trampolines still rests upon in 2022.

So how did the vikings end up on trampolines? When Madsen programmed the earliest version of the game, he didn’t know how to make characters walk yet. But he could make them jump. “I’m not an animator,” he says, “so if I just make them bounce, I don’t have to animate anything.”

Madsen’s prototype served its purpose, and for about ten years, Vikings on Trampolines was largely forgotten. But when he partnered with Andersen at D-Pad Studio, Madsen shook off the cobwebs and showed it off to his new business partner. Andersen loved it. The team made a new prototype of the concept that turned it into a Smash-like brawler, and that prototype won the first-ever Nordic Games Indie Sensation Award at the Nordic Game Awards in 2011. A promising start for a new indie game studio.

And…then it went back into the vault again. D-Pad Studios was initially focused on Owlboy, which ended up taking much longer than any of them thought it would. So for almost another decade, Vikings on Trampolines lay forgotten again until Owlboy was complete, at which point D-Pad was able to shake off the dust and take one more crack at it.

But Vikings on Trampolines’ hurdles were not yet all cleared. The version that we’re seeing now in 2022 was first intended as a competitive couch game, where the titular vikings bounce around stages on trampolines and try to knock each other off the trampolines onto the ground. But not long after D-Pad started work on Vikings, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, dampening hopes that such a game would be successful.

So D-Pad pivoted again. The competitive mode stayed at the core of Vikings on Trampolines, but the team iterated on the idea to flesh out a full adventure mode, complete with a story, villains, minigames, and boss battles. And this, then, is the Vikings on Trampolines that we saw this week at Gamescom: a 20-year saga at last nearing its conclusion, though it’s still waiting on a formal release date.

And yes, you can still play it with one hand. Andersen quips that the one-handed setup is perfect for parties “so you can drink beer” with your other hand while you play, and Madsen confirms the team has had people who were “very inebriated” beat them at the game before. But more importantly, they continue, what initially began as a gameplay novelty turned into a way to make Vikings on Trampolines available to many people who may otherwise struggle to play a couch competitive game like this. Because it only requires use of one joystick, it’s easier to play for those who struggle to hit lots of buttons, or people who may be unfamiliar with games and don’t want to deal with complex controls – perfect, in fact, to play with a less-experienced sibling like Madsen did all those years ago.

We got a hands-on preview of Vikings on Trampolines at Gamescom 2022, calling it “a blast in the right environment” that “shines brightest in multiplayer,” though the adventure mode has plenty of promise too. You can catch more Vikings on Trampolines and everything else we’re checking out at Gamescom in our roundup and ongoing live show.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.