Tencent buying former BioWare general manager's new studio
Inflexion Games are making Nightingale
Three months after the new studio of former BioWare general manager Aaryn Flynn announced their game Nightingale, they're being bought by Tencent. The media conglomerate are buying the studio, Inflexion Games, off tech company Improbable, who say they're too busy with the metaverse nowadays. So far, the plan remains the same: launch the multiplayer Victorian fantasy craft-o-survival game into early access later this year.
Tencent are a large player in the games industry's attempt to scrunch itself down into a tiny handful of risk-averse companies who own everyone else. They outright own Riot Games, Digital Extremes, Funcom, Splash Damage, Turtle Rock, and more, and they hold sizeable stakes in folks including Epic Games, Grinding Gear Games, Dontnod Entertainment, and Bloober Team. Now, they're buying Inflexion Games too.
"As announced at the end of January, and while we focus our efforts on accelerating in the metaverse, we want to make sure that the games developed by our internal studios benefit from the support of publishers with leading track records of bringing games to market. So we couldn't have hoped to have found a better partner than Tencent for Inflexion Games and for Nightingale," Improbable CEO Herman Narula said in the company's announcement. "We look forward to our continued collaboration with Aaryn and the Inflexion Games team as they explore the potential use of our technology offerings for Nightingale and beyond."
You have fun with your metaverse, then.
Formerly known as Improbable Edmonton, Inflexion came to public attention in December 2021 with the announcement of Nightingale at The Game Awards. They're mostly known for CEO Aaryn Flynn, who was at BioWare for almost two decades, eventually becoming general manager from Dragon Age II through Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age: Inquisition, and Mass Effect: Andromeda. Imogen talked with Flynn about the game soon after the big reveal.
"Our goal here is to put players in these magical spaces with lots of opportunity to interact with the world, let them build communities and let them discover things through the course of their gameplay, and their adventuring, together," he explained.
We called it one of our most anticipated games of 2022.