This week the University of Texas at Austin announced the founding of a new game industry academic department following a $5 million donation from Saber Interactive co-founder and CEO Matt Karch on behalf of the Karch family. The program, dubbed the “Karch Gaming Institute,” will be dedicated to “shaping the next generation of creative leaders” in the video game industry.
The program will operate under UT Austin’s Moody College of Communication. To the best of our knowledge the donation, one of the first video game studies programs to be named on behalf of a major industry donor. It’s also another instance of Karch boosting his profile after taking Saber Interactive out from under Embracer Group in a deal worth $247 million.
For comparison, Sony Interactive Entertainment donated $3 million to the University of Southern California’s Gerald A. Lawson fund in 2022.
The institute’s first course offerings expand on the existing game design offerings at UT Austin. “Business of Gaming: From Concept to Console” will explore game development through a business lens from pitching to release, and “Gaming Usability Lab Fundamentals” will educate students on the purpose of usability labs in the video game industry.
Both courses seem appropriate for an institute bearing Karch’s name. The Saber CEO is the surprisingly rare high-level executive with direct experience in game development, going from the trenches of TimeShift to the leader of the one game company that seems to have escaped the implosion of Embracer relatively unsinged.
Karch’s largesse is a boon for UT Austin’s prospects in teaching students the ins and outs of the game industry. It’s also another noteworthy play for an executive who seemingly to relishes more and more time in the public eye.
Saber Interactive’s CEO has a habit of defending billionaires & criticizing “agendas” in games
Commentary from various video game C-suite execs has become a relatively subdued affair since the heady moments of the 2000s. Gone are the high-profile stunts like former Xbox Boss Peter Moore’s Halo 2 tattoo, more common now are subdued comments on quarterly conference calls. The most high-profile examples of public executive noisemaking today are the friendly press appearances of Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer and former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick’s aggressive defense of his reputation following his departure from the company.
Karch’s vocal—often unprompted—hot takes go against the grain. In April 2024 he said critics were being “too hard” on Embracer and its CEO Lars Wingefors. In May he told Game Developer that not speaking up in defense of Wingefors would be “worse” than “saying something publicly bad.”
After the successful launch of Saber’s Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II in September 2024, an user claiming to be Karch left a comment on the YouTube channel of far-right personality Asmongold, stating that he saw games that made him “want to cry with their overblown attempts at messaging or imposing morals on gamers” during his time as Embracer’s chief operating officer.
A Saber Interactive PR representative said the company had “no comment” on whether the account belonged to Karch. On his LinkedIn page, Karch posted that whoever wrote the comment seemed “pretty sharp.”
He seemed to offer some context for his outspokenness in an interview with Game File’s Stephen Totilo (which took place during a flight on his private jet), saying independent developers like Tim Sweeney “fight the good fight” because they “have chips on their shoulders that are…often bigger than other parts of their body. It’s because we’ve all been taken advantage of.”
Now with an entire “gaming institute” bearing his surname, Karch certainly seems interested in keeping his name in the public eye. If Saber’s star continues to rise, it’s likely we’ll hear more from the opinionated exec.
And with multimillion dollar donations benefitting public institutions, many in the industry may be more likely to listen close to what he says.
