The wish of Tencent to expand into the gaming landscape by investing money in some interesting and innovative development studies continues and, over the last few hours, the media conglomerate has announced that it has made a large investment in Dontnod Entertainment, the studio known to the public for creating Life Is Strange and the most recent Tell Me Why e Twin Mirror. This is a minority stake, not an acquisition, but it represents another developer that Tencent is linking to this year by signing a commercial collaboration agreement. Dontnod today announced the investment, for a total of 30 million euro (around £ 26,5 million) which, according to the study, will be used mainly to finance growth and for develop new self-published intellectual properties around the world on PCs, consoles and mobile devices.
Here is the statement released by Oskar Guilbert, CEO of Dontnod:
This is a true expression of trust from a prominent online gaming leader, who is behind a string of success stories and has invested in several leading video game companies. Thanks to this partnership, DONTNOD is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the various growth drivers in the video game industry, particularly in China and on mobile platforms, in partnership with an industry leader. The capital increase announced today will allow us to step up and increase the launch of our development plan, which aims to capture more value from our original creations by self-publishing more games.
Over the past few years Tencent has acquired several video game development studios, among which we can also find Riot Entertainment e Funcom. More recently they have acquired Splash damage and the parent company of Digital Extremes, Leyou, in addition to having acquired a majority stake in Clay Entertainment. This agreement will allow Dontnod to create and self-publish the titles coming out in the coming years, without resorting to agreements with large-caliber publishers as has already happened in the past.
