Tencent has bought an awful lot of shares in video game studios in recent years, and are showing no signs of slowing down, as demonstrated by the $1.5 billion purchase of Digital Extremes, the studio behind Warframe.
The deal has been on the cards for a while but was finalised yesterday. The purchase sees the Chinese giant pick up Leyou Technologies, the parent of Digital Extremes, and includes a number of other studios including the UK based Splash Damage (who have had a hand in Gears Tactics) and Certain Affinity, who has worked on the Modern Warfare remasters and Halo Infinite. It also includes Athlon Games, who are working with Amazon on a new Lord of the Rings MMO.
It's curious to know that before Leyou snapped up these studios, it was a chicken processing company of all things - so I guess you could call this a Winner Winner Chicken Dinner? In any case, this is another significant addition to Tencent's portfolio of games, which includes studios such as Riot Games and Funcom.
Tencent is also a significant shareholder in major studios such as Epic Games, Ubisoft, Activision and Blizzard.