If you've ever wondered how Saber Interactive ended up handling the remaster of one of the biggest shooters of all time, well, Saber's CEO Matthew Karch recently regaled journalist Stephen Totilo with the tale of landing the contract for Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, and includes some of the most absurd business shenanigans I've read about for a long time.
Speaking to Totilo for his Game File newsletter (via VGC), Karch explained that, before Halo, Saber eked out a hand-to-mouth existence making games like Will Rock and Timeshift. Then chance intervened and Saber was invited to pitch for the Halo remaster. Karch opted for an absolutely bananas gambit, and essentially told Microsoft that Saber would do the remaster for free.
"I said I'd do it for free because it's Halo," Karch told Totilo. "It’s the biggest franchise in the world at the time. I said: ‘It’s like putting a Harvard diploma on your wall. Everyone in the world is going to want to work with me after they see that I've worked on this last Halo game, and it is going to open up doors. So I’ll suck it up and I’ll do it at a loss.'”
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To this Microsoft basically said 'No, you have to pitch a number', because while Karch's offer might sound like a deal too good to miss, you don't really want an unpaid studio handling one of the most hotly coveted remasters of the time. So Karch sent a new pitch raising the number from, well, not a number, to $4 million. Now, I'm not a mathematical genius, but that seems like quite a lot more than zero. Yet Karch reckoned nobody could do it cheaper, because Saber at the time was based in St Petersburg.
In any case, he was right, Saber got the job and released Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary for the Xbox 360 in 2011. Yet it seems that while Karch was happy to do the initial work for free, there was an agreement in place that Saber would receive some royalties following Halo Anniversary's launch. Karch says that Microsoft added "certain clauses" to his contract that "reduced his royalty to zero." Despite this, Saber agreed to do the (much better) Halo 2 remaster, and eventually was asked to port Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary to Xbox One as part of the Master Chief Collection.
This is where things all get a little Mad Men. Apparently, Microsoft neglected to send a contract for the port work until right before the release of The Master Chief Collection. Seeing an opportunity, Karch refused to sign the contract, demanding that Microsoft reverse their position regarding Halo: Anniversary royalties. Microsoft agreed to this, and Saber began to receive royalties for its previous work, which Karch claims amounted to tens of millions of dollars. "We've watched other people make money on our work," Karch allegedly told his partner Andrey Iones. "Now we're going to make money on our own."
In short, Karch made a wild lowball bid for Halo: Anniversary, got bilked by Microsoft out of royalties, and then by pure chance found himself in a position where he could stonewall Microsoft until he got what he wanted. And that, my friends, concludes today's business masterclass.
Mind you, this is hardly the only time Saber has taken a ride on the old financial rollercoaster. The company was acquired by Embracer Group in 2020, and was then sold in 2024 after Embracer fudged a deal that led to massive layoffs and numerous cancelled games. But Saber has thrived outside of Embracer's umbrella, having recently launched Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 to considerable success.
