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The fate of Square Enix’s Marvel IPs, Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers, remains unclear following the Embracer Group deal.
After yesterday’s Embracer Group deal announcement - which sees Square Enix depart with several of its Western studios including Crystal Dynamics (Rise of the Tomb Raider, Marvel’s Avengers), Eidos-Montreal (Guardians of the Galaxy, Deus Ex), and Square Enix Montreal (Hitman Go, Lara Croft Go, Deus Ex Go) - players are growing increasingly concerned about the future of the studio's Disney licensed games.
When asked during a Q&A session if Guardians of the Galaxy and Marvel’s Avengers were included in the transaction, Embracer Group’s CEO and co-founder Lars Wingefors responded: "All games that have been developed by the studios are included in the transaction."
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It isn't as simple as that though, as the CEO goes on to explain: "However, a number of external approvals are needed from external parties in order to close this transaction. Potentially, licensors could be one of those approvals needed."
What this means is the licence holders for the aforementioned games - i.e. Disney/Marvel - would need to approve the transfer of their IPs to Embracer. This detail of the deal has left many Marvel’s Avengers fans fretting over the future of the game in terms of its servers, and whether they will remain to exist at all if Disney doesn’t approve the deal.
Websites such as ResetEra and Reddit are now teeming with players discussing what will happen to the games once the deal is finalised. In a thread on ResetEra, one user has published a post titled "[Marvel’s Avengers / Guardians of the Galaxy] were also transfered to Embracer management and risk dying if no approval by Disney." Which has resulted in others replying with their predictions about what will happen to the Marvel games if Embracer doesn’t get Disney’s blessing.
"If [Embracer] get the okay from Marvel and honestly think they can salvage Avengers, then go ahead. That being said if they don't think this mess is worth it, just allow people to access paid skins offline and just shut the servers down," one Reddit user said.
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"I guess this is technically true, they could theoretically remove the game from sale if Disney doesn't agree to extend the licenses to Embracer. Why Disney would refuse to do that is beyond me, though." Another said on ResetEra.
Despite all of the predictions and concerns over the future of Square Enix’s Marvel IPs, there’s no use in getting worried about it just yet. Unfortunately, this is looking like one of those wait and see situations, but hopefully Disney, Square Enix, and Embracer Group won’t leave fans waiting too long for an answer.
After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training. My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.
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