More game industry news coming at you following the Team17 buying up Golf With Your Friends and YoYo Games being acquired by Opera we now have Klei Entertainment agreeing for Tencent to take a majority stake in them.
Speaking in a forum post, studio head Jamie Cheng mentioned they've "agreed to deal for Tencent to purchase a majority stake in Klei Entertainment" and that "Klei retains full autonomy of creative and operations across all aspects of the studio, including projects, talent, and more".
Klei have actually been working with Tencent since 2016, as Tencent helped Klei distribute games through China on the WeGame platform and more recently a mobile Don't Starve game. Cheng also mentioned how a "large proportion" of their players are actually from China.
Tencent have invested in a lot of different companies including Riot Games, Epic Games, Funcom, Supercell, Bluehole (PUBG) and many many more.
Pictured - Don't Starve Together
Klei have been good to Linux for games giving us the likes of Don't Starve, Don't Starve Together, Oxygen Not Included, Invisible, Inc. and Mark of the Ninja. Hopefully more to come with creative control remaining with the current Klei head.
This trend of companies pulling together lots under their banner is a little worrying, too many eggs in one basket.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Dribbleondo Jan 22, 2021
Still, always sad when studios are bought out by megacorps.
Kimyrielle Jan 22, 2021
Quoting: Dribbleondo....aaaaand here come the conspiracy theorists...
Don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to be against market concentration. Having a clue about economics is enough.
Dribbleondo Jan 22, 2021
QuoteA lot of what is rightly criticized about Fortnite originates from their effective control of the company
Tencent don't have any "effective control" over Fortnite. They get a say, sure, but others in the Board of Directors can Veto, which is the furthest thing from effective control as you can get.
Quoting: KimyrielleI don't believe that was what Dribbleondo was referring to, given that their post was directly under one talking about the Chinese Communist Party.Quoting: Dribbleondo....aaaaand here come the conspiracy theorists...
Don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to be against market concentration. Having a clue about economics is enough.
I'm also generally not happy when big companies swallow little ones, especially if they do it a lot. I couldn't really care less if the company doing the swallowing happens to be Chinese, though.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 22 January 2021 at 11:13 pm UTC
Quoting: MrKiasuThe better conspiracy theory is Tencent == Epic investor == force all Klei games to be EGS exclusive == no more linux.
Probably not all, but the next release - very likely.
Oh, well.
Quoting: NezchanWell, not getting into the Chinese government issue, but Tencent is very much the masters of predatory monetization.I'm not worried about the Chinese government at all, but that part is indeed something I'd see as very worrying - and that would be the same if EA had acquired them.
We'll see just how quickly Klei turns from industry darling to something else entirely now.
Just shows that anyone can be bought for the right price.
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me