Tencent Is Now In Exclusive Talks To Buy Warframe, Gears Of War Devs

Tencent is reportedly in exclusive talks to purchase Leyou Technologies, the company that owns Warframe and Gears of War’s developers.

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Tencent is reportedly in exclusive talks to purchase Leyou Technologies Holdings, the company that owns both Warframe developer Digital Extremes and Gears of War dev Splash Damage.

No sooner do we have reports that Sony was angling for Leyou than we get the news that Tencent is now in exclusive talks with Leyou to sell its digital assets. Those are namely Digital Extremes, the makers of Warframe, as well as Gears of War developer Splash Damage.

Leyou Technologies Holdings Ltd. had been marketing themselves for some time, receiving offers from Sony, Zhejiang Century Huatong Group, and Tencent subsidiary iDreamSky. Now it seems that iDreamSky is out and big daddy Tencent is on board to make this purchase a thing. Trading for Leyou shares was halted last week on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange due to the official notice of an impending buyout.

Although the buyout is not yet official, exclusive talks mean it is increasingly likely that Leyou will sell to Tencent, making Digital Extremes and Splash Damage the latest acquisitions of the giant Chinese media conglomerate.

Tencent is huge. The company already owns Riot Games (League of Legends) outright, as well as Norwegian publisher Funcom and Swedish developer Sharkmob. It has majority stakes in Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile) and Supercell (Clash of Clans, Clash Royale), as well as minority stakes in Epic Games (Fortnite), Activision Blizzard, Paradox Interactive, Ubisoft, PlatinumGames, and more.

However, Tencent is seen with some suspicion among gamers. Chinese law requires that any Chinese company share information with the Chinese government, which isn’t exactly a great thing these days.

Warframe players are equally concerned about this buyout. Besides players having no data privacy when it comes to China, Tencent also has a history of adding predatory monetization to games that it fully owns. There’s little that Digital Extremes or the players can do, however, as this deal seems to be all but signed.

We expect to hear more on this story once the business week resumes on Monday.

Source: PC Gamer, Bloomberg

Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/tencent-talks-buy-warframe-gears-of-war/