Tencent acquires minority stake in Dontnod for €30 million

Tencent became a minority shareholder of French studio Dontnod, investing €30 million in Life is Strange creators.

Dontnod shared the news on its official site. The studio is raising €40 million for its self-publishing ambitions through an accelerated bookbuilding process. It’s a form of offering that involves generating and capturing investor demand for shares.

The major part of this sum comes from Chinese tech giant Tencent. Dontnod will use the investment to self-publish new games and take advantage of new markets, including China.

“The capital increase announced today will enable us to step up and boost the roll-out of our development plan, which aims to capture more value from our original creations by self-publishing more games,” Dontnod CEO Oskar Guilbert said in the statement.

Dontnod was founded in 2008 and is known for titles like Remember Me, Life and Strange, and Vampyr. The studio’s latest game Twin Mirror became its first self-published project.

Tencent has been active in the investment market for a while. In 2020, the company made 31 M&A deals, which became its new record.