The LEGO Group may reacquire Light Brick Studio

Light Brick Studio, which recently became independent of the LEGO Group, may be re-absorbed into the company in the future.

LEGO Ventures is part of the LEGO Group dedicated to setting up new business opportunities for the LEGO Group that do not fit into the traditional toy manufacturing, child targeted part of the business. Light Brick Studio was an early example, with the in-house games developer releasing Builder’s Journey for Apple Arcade.

Now, the company is spinning off as an independent studio, with an investment from LEGO Ventures – the company’s start-up and investment arm – to help along the way.

Light Brick co-founders Karsten Lund has explains to Games Industry that the company needed a space outside of the LEGO Group to grow:

“We have seen a great potential for this way of working, and believe a greater autonomy and similar kind of autonomy would be good to take forward. To sort of position ourselves as more of a sister studio, if you will, to LEGO Games. Because then we have the freedom, autonomy, agility, and speed of a start-up, but with the great partnership and the LEGO IP and the brand and the idea in general – which is the thing we tried to celebrate – very close to our hearts.

“For us it was a great opportunity to make a studio that dedicates itself to the LEGO idea. It starts with the LEGO brick, which we did, and sees where we can take it from there.”

It seems the long term goal is for the studio to find itself back in the LEGO fold, though. “We’re a strategic investor, let’s say,” explains  Robert Lowe, Head of Value Creation and Marketin g at LEGO Ventures. “We’re looking for companies that we feel could eventually, hopefully, be part of the Lego stable of companies, ones that share our value and our vision. We’re very patient capital. We’re not looking for a specific return on investment over a specific time.

“We are ‘venture’ in that we’re making early stage investments and we would hopefully grow the size of that investment and that stake over a period of time. We are not a typical VC in that we’re looking for a certain exit, a certain size or multiplication. We’re looking for things that could expand the idea of what Lego could be in the future. That’s our success criteria.”

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