Probably the most common topic in my articles is, "another Embracer subsidiary is closing doors".
Vertigo Games shutting down its Amsterdam studio is being filed under "VR is struggling," and that's true enough, but there is another angle to this story and that is Embracer's enormous, slowly deflating empire. CEO Richard Stitselaar pinned the closure on the VR market remaining "a challenging space," which is true. The thing is, the studio doesn't exist in a vacuum, it sits at the bottom of a long ownership chain that ends at one of the most aggressively restructured companies in gaming. Vertigo is owned by Plaion, formerly Koch Media, which is owned by Embracer Group. And Embracer has spent the better part of two years methodically shedding exactly this kind of asset.
The Amsterdam team launched in 2015 as Force Field Entertainment, founded by some of the same people behind Guerrilla Games, then was folded into Vertigo in 2021, after Koch Media had bought Vertigo for €50 million in 2020. Koch rebranded to Plaion in 2022, and the whole structure became one more set of branches on Embracer's acquisition tree. That tree got enormous during the 2020-2021 spending spree, when Embracer bought studios at a pace few could track, then it stopped making sense the moment a major investment deal collapsed in 2023 (wink wink Saudi Deal).
Since then the story has been relentless contraction, with Embracer laying off thousands of employees, selling Gearbox at what looked like a fire-sale price, and ultimately announcing a split into three separate publicly listed companies.
Why the VR Explanation and the Embracer Explanation Aren't Rivals
The truth about VR is that it requires another piece of hardware, and one that is niche.
The VR market really is punishing right now, with Vertigo's closure landing in the same window as Rec Room's shutdown, Polyarc's layoffs, nDreams closing studios, and Meta cutting roughly 700 roles with Reality Labs in the firing line. A studio betting entirely on VR in 2026 is fighting a real headwind, no question. But the reason this particular studio closes now, rather than getting restructured or resourced through the rough patch, is that its parent has no appetite or capacity to absorb underperformers anymore.
What's Left, and What It Signals
The piece worth watching is what survives, since Vertigo runs two Dutch studios and employs around 150 people total across Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and the Rotterdam team's fate hasn't been clarified. Rotterdam is the side responsible for Arizona Sunshine, the franchise that arguably put Vertigo on the map, so its status is the real question for whether Embracer is trimming a branch or backing away from VR through this label entirely. The titles Amsterdam leaves behind aren't slouches either, with Metro Awakening, The 7th Guest Remake, and Thief VR: Legacy of Shadow all shipping recently, which underlines that this wasn't a quality problem. It was a portfolio decision made several levels up the corporate ladder.
Pandemic really inflated the gaming industry and since 2024 there is a deflation going on, and with the current state of global economics, the growth is funneling into AI. Embracer was the leading company during the pandemic and their acquisition spree was unparalleled, unfortunately most of their studios suffered during this time.
More:Embracer Group Pays Back $300m
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