Tencent has acquired Leyou Technologies for $1.5 billion, giving the giant Chinese company ownership of more games. The deal, which had been hinted at earlier this year and in which Sony was reportedly interested, was approved by Leyou shareholders on December 11 and became final today.

Leyou was a poultry processing company until 2014, when it acquired a majority stake in Canadian developer Digital Extremes, the developer of Warframe, and began diversifying into video games. Leyou then went all-in on this strategy, selling its chicken business in 2016, most recently to Splash Damage, the British developer of "Gears" multiplayer and "Gears Tactics," and most recently to "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered" and "Halo Infinite" developer Certain Affinity. Finally, Leyou founded Athlon games and is currently working on a Lord of the Rings MMO with Amazon as a publishing partner.

Leyou's name may not be well known, but you can get some idea of the scale of this acquisition. Not only does it fully own developers like Riot Games and Funcom, but it also owns just under 50% of Epic Games, plus stakes in Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Paradox Interactive, and many others. [Richard Jolly, co-founder and CEO of SplashDamage, said, "We have always been dedicated to creating team-based games that ignite friendships and build passionate communities. This is a bold new phase for our studio and a great lineup of ambitious games that will be everything Splash Damage is all about. We couldn't be more excited.

Digital Extremes has always insisted that its deal with Leyou guarantees the studio's creative independence, and that seems to have been the case with Warframe. The studio's blog post referred to the question of whether Warframe would continue to be developed this way: [Yes, we will continue to create great content for Warframe and maintain our creative independence. Our focus will remain to listen to you, the community, and upgrade Warframe based on your feedback and develop the amazing story, gameplay, and incredible new space ninja action that you have come to expect! Tencent is committed to the studio's creative vision. Tencent is well known for respecting the creative decisions and integrity of studios and giving them the autonomy and independence to experiment, innovate and thrive.

Companies like Epic have in the past responded decisively to suggestions that Tencent is an overbearing or censoring partner. Doubts remain among Western audiences about Tencent's huge holdings in the gaming sector. After all, in recent weeks, Western digital storefronts have been unable to sell Taiwanese horror games for fear of offending China. But their continued growth and reach seem unstoppable.