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UPDATE: Bohemia Interactive has denied that they have been bought by Tencent.
“It’s not true,” head of marketing Petr Poláček said to Hospodářské Noviny. “Tencent didn’t buy us. Bohemia Interactive remains an independent studio. We don’t know where this information came from”
ORIGINAL STORY:
Tencent’s most recent purchase is a majority stake in DayZ and and ArmA developer Bohemia Interactive, for which the company has spent $260. In exchange, Tencent has received a 70-80 per cent stake in the company.
The acquisition was first reported by The Information, with the two companies declining to comment at the time.
Analyst Daniel Ahmad spoke to The Information about the acquisition, stating that this investment is an attempt to compete with NetEase, the Chinese distributor of Minecraft. “Tencent is filling a gap in PC sandbox games as they don’t have their own self-published titles,” said Ahmad.
This is just the latest of many such acquisitions from Tencent, just last week news broke that the company had bought a 20 per cent stake in Japan’s Marvelous Inc, which will set the Chinese gaming and social media giant back around $65m.
Additionally, in February the company purchased a “strategic minority investment” in Berlin-based studio Yager, and in the month prior, Tencent sought to gain full ownership of Funcom, with the deal going ahead in March.
“We have had a great relationship with Tencent as our largest shareholder so far and we are excited about this opportunity,” said Funcom CEO, Rui Casais at the time. “We will continue to develop great games that people all over the world will play, and we believe that the support of Tencent will take Funcom to the next level. Tencent will provide Funcom with operational leverage and insights from its vast knowledge as the leading company in the game space.”
