NetEase has acquired Quantic Dream

Chinese publisher NetEase has purchased Quantic Dream for an undisclosed amount of money. 

The sale includes both the main studio in France and the recently founded studio in Montreal, both of which will continue to be managed on a day to day basis by David Cage and Guillaume de Fondaumière.

NetEase invested for a minority stake in the Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human developer in 2019, and shortly afterwards the studio released a handful of its previous titles on Windows. 

Now that they own the whole company, Quantic Dream is officially the first NetEase studio based in Europe. According to the studio, it will “continue to operate independently, focusing on creating and publishing its video games on all platforms, as well as supporting and publishing third-party developed titles, while at the same time leveraging NetEase’s significant game development capabilities”. 

Quantic Dream has fallen under some scrutiny in recent years due to accusations of sexist jokes, homophobia, extensive crunch, offensive digital imagery of staff and overall racism at their workplace. News stories about these events also led to the studio taking three French media outlets to court. 

Despite that happening, Quantic Dream is still currently working on Star Wars: Eclipse for LucasFilm Games, as well as other projects and publishing agreements.