Klei Entertainment, the Canadian indie studio behind such hits as "Mark of the Ninja," "Don't Starve," "Oxygen Not Included," and "Griftlands," is no longer an indie. The studio announced today that Chinese gaming giant Tencent has acquired a majority stake in the company. Commenting on the acquisition, founder Jamie "Bigfoot" Chen said, "It allows us to navigate a changing industry and focus on what we do best: creating unique experiences that no one else can do." [As part of the deal, Klei will retain full creative and operational autonomy across all aspects of the studio, including projects, talent, and more." There are a few tedious accounting changes we need to adjust. Other than that, there will be no changes to staff, projects, or other operations, and we will continue to run the studio as we always have."

Tencent is China's largest high-tech conglomerate and a major player in the gaming industry: it wholly owns Riot Games, the studio behind League of Legends, has a 40% stake in Epic Games, Activision, Ubisoft, Paradox Interactive, Frontier Development, Funcom, and Fat Shark, among others. in 2020, the company invested in 31 gaming companies, many of which were based in China. the move gives the company control of a number of studios familiar to western gamers. The company now has control of a number of studios familiar to Western gamers. For example, Leyou Technology, acquired in August 2020 for $1.5 billion, owns Warframe developer Digital Extremes and Gears Tactics studio Splash Damage. With this acquisition, all of these companies are now owned by Tencent.

Despite its massive size, Chen said, "Tencent is the only company we felt would let us maintain the level of control we require." He also noted that Klei has worked with Tencent on every game it has released in China since 2016's Don't Starve Together.

"Chinese players make up a large percentage of our game players, and we've been supporting them alongside our North American operations for several years." While we don't expect any major changes in operations in China or anywhere else in the world, we hope this partnership will help us better support our Chinese players."

According to a September 2020 report, after banning the WeChat app, the U.S. government is considering similar action against Tencent. In January, however, Reuters reported that the plan, which also includes Alibaba and Baidu, has been put on hold; Klei's latest game, the deck-building roguelike Griftlands, is currently in Early Access on Steam and is expected to be released in full later this year.

Thanks, Gamasutra.