After an enormous yr of acquisitions and investments in 2020, the Chinese language web firm Tencent has purchased one other outstanding sport studio.
It was confirmed on Friday that Tencent has acquired Klei, the builders of Shank and Do not Starve. Klei confirmed the buyout in a post on its forums.
“I wish to take a second to announce that we now have agreed to deal for Tencent to buy a majority stake in Klei Leisure,” the studio mentioned. “As a part of this settlement, Klei retains full autonomy of artistic and operations throughout all features of the studio, together with tasks, expertise, and extra.”
As for what’s going to change, founder Jamie Cheng mentioned he’ll proceed to run the studio and there will likely be no modifications to staffing, tasks, and operations, although there will likely be some “boring accounting modifications.”
Cheng mentioned he accepted the buyout so he and his crew would not have to fret about discovering new tasks and publishers to maintain the lights on.
“My want has been to allow individuals to do their finest artistic work, to be taught and develop, to not have to fret about funds, and have the ability to take pleasure in their lives exterior the studio. This has not modified,” he mentioned. “This partnership helps us navigate a altering business, and helps us give attention to what we do finest: making distinctive experiences that nobody else can.”
Klei and Tencent had truly been working collectively already, as Tencent partnered with the studio to launch Do not Starve Collectively in China on Tencent’s WeGame platform. Klei and Tencent are additionally working collectively on Do not Starve: Newhome for cell.
Cheng mentioned Klei is pleased to signal with Tencent as a result of the corporate will permit the studio to “retain the extent of management that we demand.”
“We have been working with Tencent for years and even at factors the place we disagreed, they have been all the time keen to work with us to seek out one of the best resolution for everyone concerned and defer to us after we felt strongly,” Cheng mentioned.
A report from Niko Partners confirmed that Tencent made 31 offers in 2020 associated to investments within the video games business, which is thrice as many offers because it did in 2019. Its largest deal was the $1.5 billion buyout of Leyou, the dad or mum firm of Warframe developer Digital Extremes.
A few of Tencent’s different strikes in 2020 included investing in–but not shopping for outright–the Japanese studio Platinum Video games. Tencent additionally acquired Conan developer Funcom and purchased the GTFO studio 10 Chambers.
Tencent now owns or has invested in a large number of gaming firms. It owns Riot (League of Legends), Grinding Gear Video games (Path of Exile), and Supercell (Conflict of Clans), whereas Tencent additionally owns a chunk of Fortnite studio Epic Video games. Tencent additionally has minority investments in Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, and Bluehole.
