After the announcements this spring that Microsoft will be buying Activision Blizzard (World of Warcraft, Starcraft), Take-Two Interactive was buying the mobile studio Zynga (Farmville) and Sony was buying Bungie (Destiny), the concentration process in the video game industry has continued relentlessly this summer. In a shopping spree, Swedish video game and media holding company Embracer acquired renowned gaming studios like Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montreal and Square Enix Montréal, including a whole catalogue of IP, such as Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, Thief and much more. In addition, Embracer announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire Middle-Earth Enterprises, a company that owns a vast intellectual property catalogue and worldwide rights to The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. This shift in the gaming industry to combine ownership of IP and its exploitation under one roof can be increasingly observed. Yet that was not all: in September, Chinese tech giant Tencent raised its stake in French video game company Ubisoft and there were even rumours that Amazon would like to strengthen its gaming portfolio by buying Electronic Arts. These reports have since been refuted, but not without impacting Electronic Arts' stock price. It will be exciting to see how the gaming industry will develop in the coming months and whether the trend towards IP concentration will continue.
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