Saber Interactive has effectively ended North American game development, with chief creative officer Tim Willits declaring the publisher operates "no real development in North America any more" and pointing to Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 as proof the distributed model pays.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Willits said Saber still holds its US headquarters and runs its publishing team from there, but production now sits across 15 studios in Serbia, Armenia, Georgia, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Argentina, and Australia. The 2024 split from Embracer Group stripped Saber of most of its prior North American footprint.

Willits framed the change as economics, not geography. "The development cost for [Warhammer 40,000] Space Marine 2 was a third of a major game that just released not too many months ago from a big North American studio," he said. "It was a third, and it sold 11 million more copies."

What's left of Saber in North America?

Before independence, Saber parented Aspyr Media (Austin, Texas), Demiurge Studios (Boston), Tripwire Interactive (Georgia), and Shiver Entertainment (Florida). All three of the larger studios remained with Embracer when the carve-out closed in 2024. Shiver exited via a sale to Nintendo in May 2024. Beamdog in Canada also stayed with Embracer.

Saber retained New World Interactive, which maintains offices in Denver and Calgary. New World shipped the 2018 tactical shooter Insurgency: Sandstorm and pushed out a major content update in May 2025. The studio cut headcount in 2023 ahead of the Embracer separation. New World is now Saber's only meaningful North American production presence.

What does the cost math actually look like?

Willits supplied two reference points:

• SnowRunner, Saber's off-road simulation, cost $6 million to make and has generated hundreds of millions in revenue.
• "Big North American development studios... run about $2 million+ in burn rate a month," a figure that produces $120 million in payroll alone across a five-year cycle.

Layer in marketing and publishing, Willits said, and the per-title tab reaches $150 million. Against roughly $25 of profit per copy sold, the breakeven volume stops adding up. "You don't need to spend $150 million to make a billion," he told GamesIndustry.biz. "The math just doesn't... you've got to sell a buttload, that's the problem."

Where does Saber go from here?

Willits positioned the global network as the answer to that math. "We are not afraid of any territories," he said. "Some publishers are afraid to work in territories they don't understand, but we're like, let's go, let's find some people that are talented."

Operational choices are already following the rhetoric. With Space Marine 2 as the headline reference, Saber is commissioning from the regions where the cost curve bends — not from the coastal markets that produced its former subsidiaries.

Saber enters 2025 with a cost-driven thesis now public. Watch which territory gets its next greenlight — and whether rival publishers eventually publish the same cost-versus-receipts comparisons Willits used to defend the model.