DONTNOD becomes the latest recipient of Tencent investment – looks to make more of its catalog in mobile and asian markets

French games studio DONTNOD has become the latest of many, many companies to receive investment from Chinese internet giant Tencent. Announced today, the investment was a significant proportion of a new issue of shares in the independent company.

The private offering of shares was originally planned to be €40m but demand allowed the company to raise that to €50m. Of those Tencent purchased €30m. The price of the new share was pegged at €16 per share – 0.9 per cent down on their closing market value.

Tencent now holds 22.6 per cent of shares in the Life is Strange developer, although possesses only 16.6 per cent of voting rights. The largest proportion of those (49.4 per cent) are held by Kostadin Yanev, an entrepreneur and board member of the company.

Oskar Guilbert, chairman and CEO of DONTNOD, who holds almost 3 per cent of the company and 4.3 per cent of voting rights, took the opportunity to exp,and up on the studio’s plans for the future, which included a stronger move into mobile and asian markets.

“I would like to thank all investors, both existing and new, who have contributed to the remarkable success of this capital increase, which is the largest to date for DONTNOD. With the support of our new partner, Tencent, and of all existing and new institutional investors, DONTNOD is more than ever well placed to grow and step up the implementation of its development plan which aims to capture even more value generated from its original creations by self-publishing more games and extend the reach of its catalog to mobile platforms in Asia. This transaction also enables us to strengthen our equity base whilst diversifying our capital structure.”

The company opened up a new studio in Montreal, Canada in May 2020. WIth Guilbert saying at the time: “Our goal is to create video games as close as possible to our community’s expectations. With this new international team, we will be able to envision even more ambitious titles and keep writing wonderful stories for our players.”