Tencent buying a bit of Arma devs Bohemia
Business as usual, Bohemia say
Chinese tech megacorp Tencent are buying a minority stake in Bohemia Interactive, the Czech gang behind Arma and DayZ. Bohemia say they "will continue to operate independently and be led by the existing management team." Alrighty then!
Bohemia don't say how big a stake they sold, nor how much they got for it.
Tencent have their fingers in a great many gaming pies. They fully own a number of companies including Riot Games, Funcom, Digital Extremes, and Splash Damage, and hold a majority stake in Grinding Gear Games. They also have minority stakes in Epic Games, Frontier Developments, Blizzard, Paradox Interactive, Ubisoft, Dontnod, and more. And they've worked with Bohemia before, bringing their sandbox game Ylands to China.
"We are pleased to deepen our relationship with Tencent, one of the most significant internet companies in the world," Bohemia CEO Marek Španěl said in the announcement. "We look forward to working on our current and future generations of games with the support of a strong partner that has known us for many years and understands our unique approach to online games."
While Tencent may be buying small parts of many studios, with the pace of the consolidation of the games industry they're starting to look glacial compared to folks like Embracer Group. In the past six months, the group which owns THQ Nordic, Deep Silver, and more has bought games companies including Gearbox, 4A Games and New World Interactive, Aspyr Media, Flying Wild Hog, Snapshot Games, and Zen Studios.
When the industry gets down to 100 companies total, we can have a battle royale in a Silicon Valley office to settle it once and for all. Nerf guns with live rounds, monofilament wire over the end of the slide, poison in the Monster minifridge, booby-trapped breakout rooms which fill with water, landmines in the bean bags, etc. Winner takes all, then gets to make a video game adaptation of the hostile takeover.