Embracer Group to Split Coffee Stain Studios Into Separate Company & Rebrand Itself to Fellowship Entertainment

Embracer Group plans to turn Coffee Stain Group into its own independent gaming company before 2025 ends.

The decision comes as part of Embracer's larger plan to break itself into smaller, separate businesses. Earlier, the company already separated its board game division called Asmodee.

These changes started after Embracer faced serious financial problems when a planned $2 billion investment deal with Savvy Games Group fell through, leading to widespread job cuts and studio closures across the company.

As part of this restructuring, Embracer Group will also get a new name. The company will become Fellowship Entertainment, moving away from its earlier temporary name "Middle-Earth & Friends." This rebrand reflects the company's focus on entertainment properties and franchises.

The newly independent Coffee Stain Group will be listed on the Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market in Stockholm, making it a publicly traded company.

The new Coffee Stain Group will employ more than 250 game developers and publishers. The group will include several well-known studios: Coffee Stain, Ghost Ship, Tuxedo Labs, and selected studios from Amplifier Game Invest. All these studios are located in Scandinavia, with Anton Westbergh continuing as the Group CEO.

Coffee Stain Group will keep control of several popular game franchises. These include Deep Rock Galactic, a cooperative mining game; Goat Simulator, known for its silly gameplay; Satisfactory, a factory-building game; Teardown, a destruction-based puzzle game; Valheim, a survival game inspired by Viking culture; and Welcome to Bloxburg, a popular Roblox game.

Meanwhile, Fellowship Entertainment will continue focusing on game development and publishing. However, the company also plans to expand beyond just games through what it calls a "transmedia strategy." This means Fellowship will work in areas like licensing intellectual properties, creating comics, selling merchandise, making films, and handling distribution across different types of media.

Fellowship Entertainment will be much larger than Coffee Stain Group. The company will employ approximately 6,000 people working in more than 30 countries around the world. Fellowship will own the commercial rights to major entertainment franchises, including J.R.R. Tolkien's famous works The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The company will also control other popular game series like Kingdom Come Deliverance, Metro, Killing Floor, Tomb Raider, Dead Island, and many others.

Fellowship Entertainment's collection of game studios includes many recognizable names in the gaming industry. These studios are 4A Games, Aspyr Media, CrazyLabs, Crystal Dynamics, Dambuster Studios, Dark Horse, Deca Games, Eidos-Montréal, Flying Wild Hog, Gunfire Games, Limited Run Games, Middle-earth Enterprises, Milestone, Plaion, Tarsier Studios, THQ Nordic, Tripwire Interactive, Vertigo Games, and Warhorse Studios. According to the company, Fellowship will include more than 40 different companies in total.

Coffee Stain Group CEO and co-founder Anton Westbergh shared his thoughts about the upcoming change. "Now, as we take the step to become a separately listed company, it feels both exciting and, honestly, a little bit scary but in a good way," Westbergh explained. He acknowledged that the games industry has become more competitive than ever before, but he also believes it offers greater rewards for companies that make smart decisions.

The CEO believes this separation will give Coffee Stain Group better control over its future. He thinks independence will help the company focus more on supporting their game developers, staying connected with gaming communities, and building a stronger future for Coffee Stain Group.