Saber Interactive

Saber Interactive was founded in 2001 by Andrey Iones, Matthew Karch and Anton Krupkin. They built a 3D engine from scratch, brought together a team of artists from Saint Petersburg, Russia, and started work on their first game, Will Rock. They then developed their own engine, Saber3D, which debuted in TimeShift (2007) and has kept being updated for their later games. Today it is an American company based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

In 2010 Microsoft's 343 Industries asked it to remake Halo: Combat Evolved for the game's tenth anniversary. It was Saber's first job on a major series: it kept the original engine for gameplay and used Saber3D for the visuals, and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary came out on 15 November 2011 to positive reviews. In 2014 it helped on Halo: The Master Chief Collection. On 1 August 2016 it opened its first in-house studio outside Russia, in Madrid, followed by others in Sweden and Belarus.

In 2019 it released World War Z and the Nintendo Switch version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, made with CD Projekt Red. Embracer Group bought it in February 2020, and Saber became the platform for further acquisitions: between 2020 and 2021 it acquired 4A Games, makers of Metro, New World Interactive, Zen Studios and 3D Realms, among others, and Embracer also placed Aspyr under it. In that period it also announced Evil Dead: The Game with Boss Team Games.

In March 2024 Embracer sold it to Beacon Interactive, Karch's investment company, returning control to one of its founders. Saber kept its own studios plus 3D Realms, Digic Pictures, Mad Head Games, New World Interactive, Nimble Giant Entertainment, Slipgate Ironworks and others, while Aspyr, 4A Games and Zen Studios stayed with Embracer. In 2026 Karch acknowledged that some of its upcoming games use AI to create dialogue, which caused controversy.