Former Embracer Group COO Reveals 'Saints Row' Team "Didn't Know What They Were Building."
Matthew Karch, the former interim COO of Embracer Group and the current CEO of Saber Interactive recently revealed that Saints Row developer Volition “didn’t know what they were building.”
As reported by Games Radar, in an interview with Stephen Totilo at Game File, Karch shared that the team at Volition was a mess on a number of fronts.
First, he confirmed “the Saints Row team is gone.” This is not surprising given Embracer Group announced back in 2023 that it was shutting down Volition Games. A post to LinkedIn from the company revealed, “This past June, Embracer Group announced a restructuring program to strengthen Embracer and maintain its position as a leader in the video game industry. As part of that program, they evaluated strategic and operational goals and made the difficult decision to close Volition effective immediately.”
Karch then shared, “They were so expensive for what they were. They didn't know what they were building. They didn't have any real direction. It couldn't last. And so, who's going to fund them for the next game after that disaster?”
As for how big of a disaster the game was, Karch implied, “It would be nice in an ideal world for everyone to have a job, but games with nine-figure budgets are making eight figures in revenue and that's dooming a lot of developers.”
“The days of throwing money at games other than maybe the GTAs of the world is over,” he added. “It's over. This business needs to mature. If it doesn't, the whole business is in trouble. Unfortunately, that means layoffs.”
Karch previously lamented the state of the industry in a comment on Asmongold’s YouTube channel.
He said, “I spent some time as Chief Operating Officer at Embracer and I saw games there that made me want to cry with their overblown attempts at messaging or imposing morals on gamers.”
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He also discussed the rising cost of games telling IGN, “In general, I would say that AAA development has become very risky. And that’s where Saber is different. Saber, I believe, can create AAA, but not at a AAA budget.”
And that because of the rising costs, developers and publishers are going to start charging more in order to alleviate that risk, “I think that as games become more expensive to make, the $70 title is going to go the way of the dodo [bird]. I do. I just don’t think it’s sustainable…Look, you remember the hype for Cyberpunk, which I think actually ultimately performed okay, but when the expectations are so high and so much money is put into one title, it’s hugely risky for the company that’s doing it. What if it fails?”
“You remember what happened when Ubisoft a couple of years ago, all their titles slipped out of the year, and then all of a sudden they were in an entirely different place? It’s hard to recover from that,” he elaborated. “I think the market is going to shift to development which is not necessarily lower quality, but there’s going to be an emphasis on trying to find ways to reduce costs.”
What do you make of Karch’s comments?
This group is very scary. It seems like every thing they touch they destroy. I just hope they ran out of money and that cool devs don't give in to the temptation of selling to them.