Nexon Gains Controlling Share Of Patrick Söderlund's Embark Studios

Nexon isn't getting bought, but it is doing some buying. The publisher and developer announced that it has acquired an additional 32.8% of Embark Studios, raising its share of the fledgling Swedish developer -- founded by former Electronic Arts executive Patrick Söderlund -- to 66.1%.

As you might recall from our introduction to Embark Studios back in February, the developer is working on "a cooperative free-to-play action game set in a distant future, about overcoming seemingly impossible odds by working together." Its website says that it's "on a mission to blur the line between playing and making" and that it's "experimenting with a physically-based system that uses reinforcement learning to create animations."

Söderlund blogged about the Nexon deal, calling Nexon "our first and only investor and the publisher of our first game." He also detailed some of the progress Embark has made over the past few months, increasing its head count from 50 to nearly 80, while running "weekly (and gloriously buggy) playtests."

Only some of the studio is working its first game, however; other employees are focusing on the company's "long-term mission," which is to create "a platform that we hope will let anyone create interactive experiences, even people with no prior experience with game development tools." It's an ambitious goal, and one that could produce some very interesting results in the years to come.