Embracer Group is spinning off Fellowship Entertainment, a new business unit designed to expand The Lord of the Rings and Tomb Raider, as well as breathe new life into some of the company’s dormant video game franchises.
In a letter to investors, Lars Wingefors, founder and chair of Embracer, said the new Fellowship Entertainment will “more actively be exploring” external partnerships around its well-known IP, such as Saints Row, Legacy of Kain, Deus Ex, Red Faction, The Mask, Thief, TimeSplitters.
The suggestion is we may see new games in these franchises, developed by studios that are not under the Embracer umbrella. Wingefors did not outright confirm any new games or announce a timeframe for more news, but there is now hope for some of these franchises where fans thought there was none.
Take Saints Row, for example. Earlier this year, Saints Row 1 design director Chris Stockman said he believed the series was “dead” and that Embracer had “zero ability” to do anything with the franchise. The one-time Grand Theft Auto competitor hasn’t seen a new entry since 2022’s ill-fated reboot, Saints Row. It received a mixed reception from fans, with IGN’s Saints Row review returning a 6/10. “Saints Row delivers no shortage of shallow shoot ’em up thrills, but it’s a very familiar and uninspired brand of sandbox fun,” we said at the time. Sales were depressed, and developer Volition shut down in 2023.
Then there’s Deus Ex. Earlier this year, Deus Ex lead actor Elias Toufexis branded Embracer “psychopaths,” as the wait continued for a new entry in the dormant stealth action series. In a post on X, Toufexis laid out his work schedule for 2026, prompting Deus Ex fans to suggest that one of his mystery projects might have been a long-awaited new Deus Ex sequel — something Toufexis was quick to shut down. “…no Deus Ex because the people in charge are psychopaths,” Toufexis wrote.
Toufexis has been vocal in support of a new Deus Ex game materializing over the years, though it has now been a decade since the arrival of 2016’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Developed by Eidos Montreal, the game arrived on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One to positive reviews.
But rather than develop a follow up, the next few years saw Eidos Montreal put to work on Square Enix’s failed Marvel’s Avengers live-service game, as well as its own take on Guardians of the Galaxy, alongside its continuing role as a support studio for the Tomb Raider franchise. With these franchises taking priority, Deus Ex fell by the wayside.
Fan excitement for a new Deus Ex was rekindled after Square Enix sold Eidos Montreal — and the Deus Ex franchise — to publisher Embracer, and indeed a new game in the series was reportedly worked on for two years. Alas, this project was reported to have been canned in 2024 amid Embracer’s widespread restructuring.
TimeSplitters, too, suffered a game cancelation and studio closure. In 2021, then publisher Deep Silver finally announced the return of TimeSplitters, developed by a number of key original members of Free Radical Design, including founders Steve Ellis and David Doak, at a new studio set up in Nottingham, UK. However, in December 2023, Free Radical shut down amid the Embracer restructure and the game never saw the light of day.
Will anything come of this new push from Embracer? It remains to be seen. But the company is keen to expand its largest IPs, which includes The Lord of the Rings/Middle-earth and Tomb Raider, and invest more in what it considers to be its triple-A IPs, namechecking Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Dead Island, Darksiders, Remnant, and the Metro series.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance developer Warhorse, which is owned by Embracer, has just confirmed it’s working on a Lord of the Rings RPG as well as a new Kingdom Come game. We know Crystal Dynamics has two Tomb Raiders games in the works. Dead Island 3 is already confirmed, as is Metro 2039. A third game in the Remnant franchise has not been officially announced by Gunfire Games, but it feels like an inevitability given the success of the last one.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
