For those who missed it, Embracer is split into three new publicly-traded companies, Asmodee Group (focused on board games) and two tentatively-named groups comprising their video game business. Wingefors, the CEO, and still (I believe) majority share holder of these three new companies, doesn’t do many interviews.

Personally, as the acquisitions were happening, I was rooting for Embracer, because they were clearly trying to rebuild the type of publisher that the big ones today used to be, offering a large variety of options so that you can have hits and misses and keep experimenting to find what your customers want, where today’s big publishers make a couple of games per year, leaving most types of games they used to make on the table, even if they were profitable, because they’re not the most profitable. It’s hard to keep track of what these three companies even own anymore, after splitting with Gearbox and Saber recently as well, but just prior to this shuffle, Embracer absolutely had so many irons in the fire that plenty of them were catching my interest, like the old days.

Unfortunately, Embracer did this with a lot of debt, and comes to this wisdom all to late:

I’m a firm believer in equity. I think debt in general is quite dangerous as a tool. You should be careful to carry too much in gaming.

And then he basically immediately disregards this wisdom with the next sentence. There’s an old saying from Warrent Buffet, “A rising tide floats all boats…only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.” And Wingefors was naked.