Chinese giant Tencent has signed another deal. This time, the company acquired a minority stake in the British Playtonic, the authors of the platformer Yooka-Laylee. How much this purchase cost is not disclosed.
Yooka-Laylee
According to the terms of the deal, Playtonic will continue to operate independently and retain control over all its IP.
The money received by Playtonic will be spent on scaling the business. In the next two years, she is going to increase the number of employees from 40 to 90 people and does not exclude that she will have to buy other companies to do this. Playtonic also intends to form three internal development teams instead of the current one — each will create a new game. In their press release, the British did not specify what specific projects they would work on, but in an interview with the GamesIndustry portal.biz stated that one of the new products will be a continuation of the Yooka-Laylee franchise.
In addition, part of the money will go to the development of the publishing direction of Playtonic. The company has already hired Danny Spiteri, who previously worked at Raw Fury and Team 17, as the head of the division.
According to Gavin Price, managing director of Playtonic, Tencent’s investment will allow his company to get rid of the “startup mindset” and start playing a more active role in the industry.
“Six years ago, we built a cool rocket and set a course that we think is right and exciting. We are very pleased that Tencent agreed with this course and provided some rocket fuel for our mission,” Price said.
Playtonic was founded in 2014 by natives of the British studio Rare, known for such titles as Donkey Kong Country, Banjo-Kazooie and Sea of Thieves. In the portfolio of Playtonic itself, in addition to the two parts of Yooka-Laylee, there are also games A Little Golf Journey and Demon Turf, but in their case Playtonic was not the developer, but the publisher.