Six years is a long time in the games industry, especially when your parent company has spent the last few of those years selling off studios, laying off staff, and chopping itself into pieces. For 34BigThings, Italy's second-largest independent game studio, the timing of its exit from Embracer Group feels less like a coincidence and more like a well-timed escape.
The Turin-based studio announced this week that co-founder Valerio Di Donato has acquired full ownership of 34BigThings, ending the Embracer chapter entirely. Di Donato will lead the studio alongside fellow original co-founder Giuseppe Enrico Franchi and incoming chief financial officer Daniel Giagnorio. The financial terms of the buyback were not disclosed.
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What the founders actually wanted back
Here's the thing about independence: it's rarely just about money. Franchi made that clear when he described what the studio regains now that it's no longer answering to a Swedish megacorp. "Being independent means being free to pick and choose our own projects, freely discard what doesn't work, allocate production resources the way we see fit, and being quicker in seizing external opportunities without having to wait for approval."
That last part is telling. Approval chains inside large conglomerates are notoriously slow, and for a studio with creative ambitions, waiting on sign-off from a parent company dealing with its own financial chaos is not exactly a recipe for good games.
Di Donato was measured in his comments about Embracer, acknowledging that the acquisition period gave 34BigThings real structural stability. The studio grew to more than 70 employees under that arrangement, and Di Donato credits Embracer's stewardship with providing "invaluable structure" while also giving the team a front-row seat to the realities of balancing development priorities against corporate stakeholder demands. That's a polite way of saying they learned exactly what they didn't want.
The Embracer backdrop makes this more interesting
Franchi was direct about one thing: 34BigThings' decision to reacquire itself had nothing to do with whatever internal conversations Embracer may have been having about the studio's future. "Our reacquisition plans were independent to any, if existing, conversations otherwise and motivated by the growth and future direction we wanted to see in the studio."
That said, the broader context is hard to ignore. Embracer has been in full retreat mode for several years now. The company that once looked like it was buying up half the games industry has since sold off publishers, shut down studios, and restructured itself multiple times. Gearbox went to Take-Two. Arc Games and Cryptic Studios were sold off. The company has been splitting itself into separate entities as part of what it calls a bifurcation strategy. 34BigThings walking out the door is one more data point in that ongoing unraveling.
A production pipeline that sounds genuinely ambitious
What most players will want to know is what comes next. Franchi says the studio is ready to kick off its next phase with a "major title built on one of the most important, beloved, and revered intellectual properties in the world," set to be announced later this year. A second major title is scheduled for 2027, with another project slated for 2028.
That's a full pipeline for a 70-person studio, and the IP teaser is the kind of language that tends to set communities speculating. 34BigThings has form with high-speed, technically demanding games through the Redout series and the upcoming Carmageddon: Rogue Shift, so whatever IP they've landed, you'd expect it to have some edge to it.
The key here is whether the studio can maintain that momentum without the financial backstop of a larger parent. Independence is liberating right up until the point where a project runs long and the runway gets short. For now though, the founders have their studio back, their roadmap is full, and the announcement sounds like a team that genuinely believes in where it's headed.
For more on the games coming out of studios reclaiming their creative direction, check out our gaming guides covering the titles worth paying attention to. If you're already playing 34BigThings' earlier work, our Escape Simulator 2 controls and settings guide and the Escape Simulator 2 achievements guide are worth bookmarking for your next session.
