Chinese technology giant Tencent will buy a majority stake in Klei Entertainment, the Canadian independent developer behind Do not starve, studio founder Jamie Cheng announced Friday on the company’s official forums.
“As part of this agreement,” wrote Cheng, “Klei maintains complete autonomy of creation and operations in all aspects of the studio, including projects, talents and more.” Cheng cited “a changing industry” as an important factor in his decision.
Klei was first drawn up here at Polygon in 2013. The company gained prominence that same year with the launch of Do not starve, a peculiar survival game with a playful art style. The game ended up evolving to Don’t starve together, which added multiplayer and other features to the experience. Cheng founded Klei in 2005 in Vancouver, British Columbia; other studio games include 2010 Shank and 2012 ninja brand.
Don’t starve together it’s actually where Klei’s relationship with Tencent started. In 2016, Klei entered into a partnership with the company to bring Don’t starve together to China, where the game was a huge success. Notably, it was the first game to be released on the WeGame platform, the Steam equivalent of Tencent.
“We look at many different companies,” said Cheng in the post, “and over the years, we’ve worked with a large number of publishers and distributors. Tencent is the only company that we think would allow us to maintain the level of control that we require. “
Cheng added that the experience for players in North America should remain unchanged after Tencent acquires a majority stake in Klei, while those in China will begin to receive “better support” due to the purchase.
This is far from the first time that Tencent, the world’s largest video game distributor, has made an investment in Western developers and publishers. The huge Chinese company owns Riot Games (League of Legends), and has investments in Epic Games (Fifteen days), Activision Blizzard (Call of Duty, World of Warcraft), Paradox Interactive, Roblox and many others. Tencent also invests in technology companies adjacent to games, such as Discord and Reddit. The proceeds from these investments helped “Pony” founder Ma Huateng to become China’s richest man, according to a 2017 report.