Techland has revealed that Chinese conglomerate Tencent will be taking majority ownership of the shares of the Polish game developer .
As reported by Windows Central, Techland CEO Pawel Marchewka revealed the news in a public post on the company’s website.
This isn’t quite the same situation as Tencent’s other acquisitions. Techland continues to be a privately held company, and retains all the ownership of their IPs. Pawel will also stay as the company’s CEO, and the company will continue to operate and create as they see fit.
So this arrangement seems to be mostly about securing finances for the company, and it is one that Tencent seems more than happy to enter into.
In Pawel’s own words:
“Teaming up with Tencent will allow us to move full speed ahead with the execution of the vision for our games. We have chosen an ally who has already partnered with some of the world’s finest video game companies and helped them reach new heights while respecting their ways of doing things.”
Given how long we had been covering the Microsoft Activision deal, it may seem odd to reexamine this, but Tencent, as well as other companies like the Saudi PIF and Embracer Group, have been in the business of acquiring game companies in part or in whole for nearly a decade now.
This isn’t exactly the same thing as Microsoft or Sony buying game studios. Rather than consolidation, these companies have seen the continued growth of the video game industry, even among smaller and less famous games. While many of these companies have been investing in Activision, EA, and Nintendo, they have been making bigger waves taking full acquisition of smaller companies.
It’s also a unique situation for Techland as well. Intriguingly, just like CD Projekt RED, the company started out localizing and distributing games in their home country of Poland. They transitioned into making video games in the 2000s, and were best known for the Call of Juarez games until Dead Island.
Released in 2011, Dead Island was Techland’s breakout hit, as they had seemingly stumbled upon a winning formula for zombie survival open world combat and exploration.
While they also worked on the lesser Dead Island: Riptide, Techland had ideas for an even more ambitious game that would win them a dedicated following among gamers looking for something new. That game would be Dying Light.
As of 2023, Techland has just published Dying Light 2: Stay Human, but other projects, such as Warhound and Hellraid, have been put indefinitely on hold.
This acquisition might really be just what Techland needs to build a more productive and stable pipeline for their projects, and also allow them to better realize their vision through their games library.
Techland has felt like a studio on the cusp of crossing over to mainstream success for some time now, but hasn’t quite gotten there yet. Perhaps Pawel is right that this is what they need to cross that threshold.
