A new report has emerged which claims that Chinese gaming and tech giant Tencent purchased a 15% stake in Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead Game Studios last year.
According to Insider Gaming (which in turn cites Swedish publications Dagens Industri and Breakit), Tencent paid roughly $83 million for the stake, which represents a fraction of Arrowhead’s reported valuation of about $532 million.
Insider Gaming also says that Arrowhead chief creative officer Johan Pilestedt welcomed the deal, claiming that it will open up the Chinese market for Arrowhead. Pilestedt also apparently said that the Chinese player base is the “holy grail” in the gaming industry (a quote for which Insider uses machine translation).
Arrowhead is far from the only Western game company in which Tencent has a stake. The company is one of Ubisoft’s major shareholders, having recently had a major role in the creation of a new entity that will handle much of Ubisoft’s most popular IP.
Tencent also counts Dying Light developer Techland, Elden Ring and Dark Souls studio FromSoftware, and Fortnite giant Epic Games among its investments, with the latter having landed Tencent in hot water with the US government in the past.
That’s not to mention Tencent’s many collaborations with other studios in the gaming industry, like its Monster Hunter mobile RPG or its mobile version of Final Fantasy XIV (which has yet to come to the West). Suffice it to say Tencent is a pretty big deal, even for the Western gaming industry.
If you’re unfamiliar with Arrowhead, meanwhile, its most recent (and by far its biggest) game is PS5 and PC exclusive Helldivers 2, which passed twelve million sales last year and which has a board game adaptation on the way as well.
Despite Helldivers 2‘s monumental success, creative director Johan Pilestedt is already thinking about what to do next; in January, he announced he would take a “sabbatical” before returning to work on the studio’s next project.
It’s unlikely that Tencent’s investment in Arrowhead will result in any major creative changes for the company, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens next. Stay tuned for more.
