World War Z – the zombie apocalypse isn’t over yet (pic: Saber Interactive)

World War Z looks set to become a major games franchise, as the new owners of Saber Interactive reveal they still own the rights to the IP.

Developer Saber Interactive is now a subsidiary of Embracer Group, the parent company of THQ Nordic and Deep Silver that has been buying up a host of independent developers and game franchises for the last several years.

Although the final price tag hasn’t yet been confirmed it could be up to $525 million (£405m) if Saber meet all their milestones this year.

Saber’s most successful recent title is 2019’s World War Z and from the way they’re talking about the licence it sounds like a sequel is already a given.




Speaking during an investor presentation, Saber CEO Matthew Karch described World War Z as ‘a great franchise’ with ‘a lot of potential in the future’.

He also implied that the company had the rights to the franchise for a considerable length of time, saying, ’Personally, I think licensed IP sometimes gets a bad rap. You can make just as much money with a licensed IP as you can with your own IP, it’s just a question of how long you have that IP for.

‘In the case of World War Z we have some pretty good protections and we can continue to develop that franchise and plan to. And as long as we have that then it’s almost the equivalent of owning it, with just the obligation to share on the back end a bit.’

The game is based on elements of both the book and film, although a sequel to the latter was cancelled last year.

Although £405 million seems an awful lot to pay for such a relatively unknown developer, Saber Interactive has over 600 employees across five offices and recently appointed id Software veteran Tim Willits as chief creative officer.

Even so, beyond World War Z most of its recent work has been porting existing games, most notably the Nintendo Switch version of The Witcher 3.

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