Metro developer 4A Games Ukraine rebrands as Reburn – Why, how, and does 4A Games still exist?

Independent developer 4A Games Ukraine has rebranded as Reburn and announced their new sci-fi IP La Quimera.

You might be wondering why they’ve done this, and how, when 4A Games and the Metro series are both owned by Embracer Group. Well, it’s because what has generally been referred to as 4A Games is actually two companies: 4A Games Malta which is owned by Embracer, and 4A Games Ukraine (now Reburn), which is independent.

It makes absolute sense that, now that they are launching a new IP, Reburn needs to stake out a new identity for itself.

There’s plenty of scope for confusion here, and there is still some fuzzy grey areas in the understanding of the timelines and the financial transactions that took place over the past decade. We’ll seek to clear this up through this article.

In essence, 4A Games was founded in 2006 by a core group of STALKER developers striking out from GSC Game Worlds. In 2014, with the first wave of the Russian-backed uprisings in Eastern Ukraine and Russian annexation of Crimea, some of the team, including creative director and co-founder Andrew Prokhorov and CTO Oles Shyshkovtsov, left the country and set up a new studio in Malta – 4A Games Malta. Both studios could use the 4A Games trademark, share the 4A Engine, and develop Metro Exodus together. In public statements, the Malta studio was referred to as the headquarters for 4A Games, with the Kyiv studio

Where things get muddled is in August 2020. At that time, Embracer (who already held the Metro IP via Koch Media) acquired “4A Games”, announcing in the press release that Saber Interactive would be the new parent company for the 150+ members “across two studios in Malta and Ukraine”. Despite the last two years of instability for Embracer, “4A Games” and the Metro IP are still held by the company.

However, the timeline according to Reburn is that Embracer only acquired 4A Games Malta in 2020. Separately in the same year, 4A Games Ukraine received additional investment and started work on their new IP La Quimera. At a later date, and to prevent future confusion, they have decided to leave the 4A Games trademark with the Malta-based studio and rebrand as Reburn.

It’s a quietly remarkable story for how unremarkable it actually is, outside of scratching our heads how Embracer didn’t actually acquire the Ukraine studio. There’s no big wave of layoffs, no exodus of developers, and both studios can proudly share their legacy of working on the Metro series. This is perhaps conceptually similar to how Arkane Lyon and Arkane Austin created Dishonored together and then started working on separate projects.

Looking to the future, both Reburn and 4A Games will be able to use the 4A Engine. While Reburn has now announced La Quimera, 4A Malta’s next game is still under wraps – the most recent game in the Metro series was Metro: Awakening VR, developed and self-published by Vertigo Games, and we know that a new Metro is in the works.

Source: Reburn