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Dontnod Entertainment, the studio behind titles such as Life is Strange, Vampyr, and Twin Mirror, has announced that it has sold a minority stake to Chinese conglomerate Tencent.
The French developer agreed to the Tencent investment as part of its ongoing efforts to becoming financially secure enough to self-publish its future releases. Tencent’s stake equates to something in the region of €30 EUR (roughly $36 million USD) toward Dontnod’s capital. In return, Tencent receives a chair on the studio’s board of directors.
“We are delighted to welcome Tencent as a Dontnod investor,” said Dontnod CEO Oskar Guilbert. “Through this partnership, Dontnod is perfectly positioned to take advantage of the various growth drivers in the video game industry, in particular in China and on mobile platforms[…] The capital increase announced today will enable us to step up and boost the roll-out of our development plan, which aims to capture more value from our original creations by self-publishing more games.”
This is only the latest industry move by Tencent this week, as mere days ago it was announced that the multimedia corporation had purchased a majority stake in another relatively small studio, Klei Entertainment. It should be clarified that the two deals are very different in scale, with the Dontnod transaction more of a company investment, and not anything close to a studio purchase.
Tencent acquires minority stake in Dontnod Entertainment [Daniel Ahmad]
