Tencent, a leading Internet company with a large online game focus, entered into an agreement to acquire 29% of the shares in Funcom.
Tencent has agreed to acquire all shares belonging to the Norway-based KGJ Capital AS, which is currently the largest shareholder in Funcom. The acquisition has resulted in Tencent holding the biggest stake in Funcom.
“We are very pleased to see Tencent come in as the largest shareholder of Funcom,” said Funcom CEO Rui Casais. “Tencent has a reputation for being a responsible long-term investor, and for its renowned operational capabilities in online games.The insight, experience, and knowledge that Tencent will bring is of great value to us and we look forward to working closely with them as we continue to develop great games and build a successful future for Funcom.”
For more than a decade, Funcom has successfully launched major multiplayer titles including Anarchy Online, Age of Conan, The Secret World, and most recently Conan Exiles. 2017 and 2018 were the most profitable years in Funcom’s history. Funcom announced recently that the company has acquired the exclusive rights to develop and publish PC and console games based on the DUNE IP for the next six years. The company is already in development on an open-world sandbox game set in the DUNE universe, and is working closely with Legendary Entertainment, who will be releasing a new DUNE film in December 2020.
Tencent ranks top in terms of online games revenue globally and is a shareholder in many of the world’s leading gaming companies such as Riot Games, Epic, Supercell, Ubisoft, Paradox, Frontier, and Miniclip. In case you missed it, that means they have a large hand in both League of Legends and Fortnite, which are… influential, let’s say. Tencent is kind of a big deal.
Funcom may not be of the same caliber as some of the other companies Tencent holds a stake in, but they’re still a pretty noteworthy independent developer and publisher, and it makes sense that they’d be drawing more attention with their recent successes. This probably won’t change too much for them, aside from possibly gaining more resources on upcoming projects. We’d be best served keeping an eye on them in the coming few years.
