Tencent, one of the biggest players in the Chinese web and the leading video game publisher in its country, continues to shop in the West.
The group announced this Monday morning the acquisition of the British video game studio Sumo, which specializes in large-budget productions for consoles.
The operation values Sumo at 1 billion euros.
Tencent already owned just over 8% of Sumo's capital, and was its second largest shareholder.
The British studio went public in 2017.
The Sumo group owns 14 development studios in five countries.
He works in partnership with the biggest publishers in the console world, for whom he develops command games.
He designed for Sony
Sackboy: A Big Adventure
, released at the end of the year on PlayStation 4 and 5. Sumo also produced for Sega the game
Team Sonic Racing
(2019), and
Crackdown 3
(2019) for Microsoft. .
"
Sumo's Board of Directors strongly believes that the group's business brings together Tencent's expertise, strategic resources and broad ecosystem in the video game industry,
" said Sumo President Ian Livingstone.
Tencent owns major Western video game players, such as Riot Games (
League of Legends
) or mobile game creator Supercell (
Clash of Clans, Clash Royale
). He also took minority
stakes
in Epic Games (
Fortnite
), and the French Ubisoft and Dontnod (
Life is strange
).