Saber Interactive is an American developer and publisher based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Its reputation rests on technical craft, whether the job is building an original game, rebuilding a beloved classic or getting a demanding title running well on new hardware. Andrey Iones, Matthew Karch and Anton Krupkin founded the company in 2001 and started from first principles. They built a 3D engine from scratch, gathered a team of artists from Saint Petersburg, Russia, and shipped their first game, Will Rock. The proprietary Saber3D engine came next, powering TimeShift in 2007, and the studio has kept updating it for its later games. The breakthrough came in 2010, when Microsoft's 343 Industries asked Saber to remake Halo: Combat Evolved for the game's tenth anniversary. It was the studio's first major franchise, and its approach showed real respect for the source material. The original engine still ran the gameplay so the game would play exactly as players remembered, while Saber3D drew the new visuals over the top. Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary released on November 15, 2011, to positive reviews, and Saber went on to assist on Halo: The Master Chief Collection in 2014.
Growth came quickly after that. On August 1, 2016, Saber opened its first internal studio outside Russia, in Madrid, and then added studios in Sundsvall, Sweden, where it bought the porting specialist Binary Motion, and in Minsk, Belarus. 2019 was a defining year. The co-op shooter World War Z launched on April 16 and sold more than one million units in its first week. That October, Saber worked with CD Projekt Red on the Nintendo Switch version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition, a port reviewers praised for its performance and playability. In February 2020, Embracer Group acquired Saber in a deal worth US$525 million. The studio kept its autonomy, with Matthew Karch staying on as CEO and Andrey Iones as COO, and Saber became the platform for a run of Embracer acquisitions that included 4A Games of the Metro series, New World Interactive of Insurgency: Sandstorm, 3D Realms, Slipgate Ironworks, Zen Studios and Aspyr. Evil Dead: The Game, made with Boss Team Games, was announced at The Game Awards 2020, and Saber later co-developed Crysis 2 Remastered and Crysis 3 Remastered with Crytek for the Crysis Remastered Trilogy. In March 2024, Embracer sold Saber for US$247 million to Beacon Interactive, Matthew Karch's own company, which put the co-founder back in control. Saber kept its own studios along with 3D Realms, Digic Pictures, New World Interactive, Nimble Giant Entertainment and Slipgate Ironworks, while 4A Games, Aspyr and Zen Studios stayed with Embracer. Today Saber employs more than 1,350 people, and its catalog shows what that engineering-first approach gives players: faithful remakes, ambitious ports and co-op action built to be played with friends.
