Tencent buys Leyou Technologies for $ 1.5 billion

Tencent Holdings has added another group of game developers and publishers to its team with the acquisition of Leyou Technologies for $ 1.5 billion. The first agreement was reportedly signed on December 11, and only on the 23rd it was possible to settle all the details of the transaction.

Leyou includes a number of game studios from the UK, Canada and other countries. For example, the Splash Damage studio was directly involved in the creation of first-person shooters, including for the Activision Blizzard studio. Digital Extremes, also part of Leyou Technologies, has created the Warframe action game. From now on, Tencent Holdings will have a stake in Certain Affinity, which has helped create some of the Call of Duty and Halo games.

Leyou Studios join Tencent's growing roster of assets, including League of Legends and VALORANT from Riot Games, Brawl Stars and Clash Royale from Supercell, and Funcom. The company also owns a sizable minority stake in Fortnite maker Epic Games, as well as minority stakes in Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Krafton and many other video game companies.

It is worth adding that in October Tencent invested $ 100 million in Chinese esports company Versus Programming Network, which is the local operator of many online games, including PUBG Mobile, Honor of Kings, CrossFire and FIFA Online.