Astral Chain and Bayonetta Developer Platinum Games Receives Investment from Chinese Developer Tencent

Spencer Baculi |

Jan 8, 2020

Platinum Games, the studio known for stylish character action games such as Nier: Automata and Astral Chain, recently announced that they had partnered with Chinese conglomerate giant Tencent to further their game development aspirations.

In a news announcement posted to the official Platinum Games website, President and CEO Kenichi Sato informed fans that the studio had “received a capital investment” from Tencent, which would be the basis for their partnership, as well as assuring them that the partnership will have “no effect on the independence of our company.”

“Announcement regarding partnership with Tencent

We would like to announce we have received a capital investment from Tencent Holdings Limited as a basis for partnership. This partnership has no effect on the independence of our company, and we will continue operations under our current corporate structure.

We hope to use this capital to strengthen our foundation as a business and expand from game development into exploring self-publishing. We also hope that this partnership can give us a wider global perspective, while still creating high quality games that stay true to our name.

Thank you as always for your continued support. Please look forward to what we have in store.

January 7, 2020

President and CEO

Kenichi Sato”

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Platinum Games is currently working on the third entry in the Bayonetta series as well as their new action-hack-and-slash IP, Babylon’s Fall.

This is far from the first established studio that Tencent has taken a vested interest in, as the conglomerate also has investments in companies such as Epic Games (40%), Ubisoft (5%), and Paradox Interactive (5%).

In 2015, the company bought out Riot Games, becoming the owning party of the League of Legends developer.

Tencent’s 5% stake in Activision Blizzard is speculated to have directly influenced the banning of Hearthstone champion blitzchung after he made a statement in support of the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.

What do you make of Platinum Games’ announcement?