Square Enix Sells Western Studios & IPs for $300 million; 5 Wicked Ex-Squeenix IP Mods feature

Square Enix has sold off practically all its western studios and IPs to Embracer Group - with some of the biggest names here being Deus Ex, Tomb Raider, and Thief. With a big history of modding across some of the IPs in the deal, here's five mods for games Embracer Group has just inherited!

Thief 3 Sneaky Upgrade

By snobel

The patch contains various bugfixes and game improvements such as widescreen support, and provides some GUI tweaks. It also enables the use of the FMSel fan mission loader frontend with Thief 3 and bundles the most important T3 mods. It works with the GOG and Steam versions of the game. Reasonably well-regarded and one of the last games in the "classic" Thief line-up before the reboot in 2014, revisiting old games with revision mods is always a good time.

DXN - Deus Ex: Nihilum

By FastGamerr

In 2049, unsavory conditions are rampant throughout the world. As soon as it becomes clear that a terrorist attack in Shenzhen, China, was carried out by perpetrators with ties to international groups and that Hong Kong may be their next target - the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO) dispatches their first nano-augmented agent, Mad Ingram, into the city to prevent the situation from escalating any further.

Thief 2 HD Texture Mod

By Bentraxx Productions

The project is a HD texture mod for the second part of the game series Thief (Thief II: The Metal Age). Often, it's difficult to make serious changes to a game's gameplay, but some games have gameplay loops so timeless they can be visited and enjoyed by the right audience any time, in any era of gaming. In those cases, the best route is your tried-and-true HD texture mod - a way to uplift one of the few areas older classics might fall behind.

Deus Ex Human Revolution: MOD Hardcore Revival

By Grognougnou

Deus Ex Hardcore Revival is a mod for Deus Ex Human Revolution Director's Cuts. The aim of this mod is to make the gameplay more balanced, since the game was inciting the player to play too much in a certain way. Human Revolution was the first "reboot" of the classic Deus Ex series and whilst some elements were controversial at the time it has since grown into its own. The kind of game you can replay many times, gameplay revision mods like this are great for keeping the replay value high and giving new ways to enjoy our favourite titles.

Thief Gold HD Texture Mod

By Bentraxx Productions

The last mod on our list today completes a trifecta of HD and overhaul mods for the first three classic Thief games. Sometimes bundled together on sale, it's not a bad idea then, if you're wondering where the franchise could go under a new IP owner, to try out the classics in a form better than ever. Thanks to HD mods that uplift the visuals of these already very strongly-designed games, there's always something new to discover in the dark.

Embracing Classic Studios

Earlier this week, the news broke that Square Enix was selling Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montréal, and Square Enix Montréal - its three western development studios - to Embracer Group for $300 million. Considered by some to be a pretty damn good deal considering the value of the IPs included - Tomb Raider, Deus Ex, and Thief to name a few - Embracer takes on 1,100 new employees spread across the acquisition in a move that might see some classic franchises brought back into the modern day.

New Eyes

Most of the franchises in the acquisition have received modern reboots, but only Tomb Raider's seemed to stick. The acquisition, in Square Enix's words, "enables the launch of new businesses by moving forward with investments in fields including blockchain, AI, and the cloud." Indicating a change in business and development direction, some might argue it's a good thing these IPs are elsewhere for more traditional results.