Tencent has acquired Left 4 Dead and Evolve developer Turtle Rock Studios, once again making moves to gain a foothold outside their native China. The accompanying statement made it perfectly clear the move will have no effect on Turtle Rock’s latest release Back 4 Blood, which was published by Warner Bros. Games.
While Turtle Rock will join Tencent, the studio will retain its “independent operations” that are currently run out of their Lake Forest headquarters in California. Co-founders Phil Robb and Chris Ashton will continue to run all of their studio operations. Turtle Rock Studios’ General Manager and President Steve Goldstein said:
We are all looking forward to joining the Tencent family of studio. Tencent’s outstanding partners, global reach, deep knowledge of gaming and unprecedented support will help us create the kinds of ambitious games we dream of, while allowing us to retain our autonomy and independent spirit.
Tencent has been making a lot of acquisitions and investments within the gaming industry in 2021. According to Niko Partners‘ Senior Analyst Daniel Ahmad they’ve targeted “more than 100 video game related companies” this year alone, 30% of which were game companies outside of China. Their investments have included Life is Strange developer Dontnod Entertainment, Lost Soul Aside developer UltiZero Games, Portal Knights developer Keen Games, Yooka-Laylee developer Playtonic Games, FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa Corporation, and the brand new studio Raccoon Logic. As well as Turtle Rock Studios, their acquisitions have included Sackboy: A Big Adventure developer Sumo Digital. It’s quite an impressive résumé.
The acquisition “will have no effect on Back 4 Blood“, which promises a significant amount of post-launch content following its release in October. The latest game update that arrived earlier this week included offline campaign progression, a plethora of card changes including a completely new supply line, and the balancing of Recruit, Veteran and Nightmare difficulties.
[Source: Business Wire, Twitter]
