Tencent Acquires Back 4 Blood Dev Turtle Rock Studios - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 17 December 2021 / 2,745 Views
Tencent announced it has acquired Back 4 Blood developer Turtle Rock Studios' parent company Slamfire.
Turtle Rock will become part of Tencent and retain its independent operations in Lake Forest, California. The current team led by co-founders Phil Robb and Chris Ashton will continue to run its operations.
The acquisition will have no effect on the multiplayer zombie shooter, Back 4 Blood.
"We are all looking forward to joining the Tencent family of studios," said the president and general manager of Turtle Rock Studios Steve Goldstein. "Tencent’s outstanding partners, global reach, deep knowledge of gaming and unprecedented support will help us create the kinds of ambitious games we dream of, while allowing us to retain our autonomy and independent spirit."
The chief strategy officer of Tencent Games Global Eddie Chan added, "We are huge fans of Turtle Rock’s games, especially their amazing approach to creating co-operative online game. We can’t wait to see what comes next, and we’re excited to be part of their future."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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well, lets see what happens here.
Likely nothing. Tencent acquisitions consist of just devs getting a bunch of money and nothing else. Tencent doesn’t seem to manage any of the studios they acquire like other publishers do.
Yeah. So far, Tencent seems to be a very good player in the gaming space (from a gamer's perspective). They infuse cash, connect the devs to other Tencent resources, and let them do as they please.
I understand that people are skeptical of big companies swallowing up a bunch of smaller ones, especially when that big company is China-based. But, so far they haven't shown us anything but positives, afaik.
Think of it like this: would you rather the studio be folded into EA or Activision?
No such thing as free money. There are always strings attached.
It certainly isn't free money. And I certainly don't mean to say that Tencent is totally hands off. The point is that they seem to be much more of an investor in, and much less of a parent to the developers that they buy.
Well now I don't feel as bad about Back 4 Blood being a bit of a disappointment, since now I'm not so confident about the game's future on Steam anymore.
fck tencent fck china mostly the government haha
Another one bites the dust.
If people are gonna boycott game companies fully or part owned by Tencent you might need a new hobby , That lists is insane and only expanding .
Well I mean, they did make Evolve, so I guess a match made in heaven?.
Still, RIP.
Oh dear...
Greeeeeeeeeeeeat.........
Well now I know what game I won't be returning to any time soon. Not interested in supporting China's terrible...everything.
I agree that the Chinese government is terrible. But, Tencent is not state-owned.
I won't knowingly do business with Chinese state-owned enterprises (TCL TVs is a good example. I refuse to buy them). But, it is (arguably) a good idea to support private industry in China, as thriving private industry correlates strongly with political liberalization.
That was the whole point of Nixon going to China in the first place. All it’s done is to enrich and entrench the CPC and enable them to spread their influence through acquisition of foreign assets. China is more tightly controlled by the CPC than at any time since the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Any US company that accepts Tencent money accepts that they are subject to the whims of Xi Jinping.
You could say that about any company that does serious business in China. That includes, to the best of my knowledge, all of the big tech players that we consider to be American, and probably just about every big company in the world. China has about 20% of the world's population, and they are about to be the world's largest economy, in terms of GDP. Right or wrong, essentially no big company is passing up access to that market.
I don't know enough about Chinese politics to say whether you're right or wrong about the CCP's relative control. But I do know enough about economics to say that their economy has pretty substantially liberalized in the last two to three decades.
Much news out of China isn't good, from the perspective of just about anybody in the world other than the Chinese elite. But, that doesn't mean that there is no hope, nor does it mean that every Chinese person or every Chinese business should be considered part of the ruling regime, or treated as a proxy for them.
Xi Jinping very much disagrees with you. He absolutely considers every Chinese company to be a proxy for his regime and a way to spread his influence beyond China's borders.
And that's the problem.. China's economy liberalized, but their actual society is at its most authoritarian since Mao was alive. That's not a a good thing for anybody who doesn't support the CPC. They just made Xi president for life. They are cracking down hard on Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang. A lot of Africans are feeling buyer's remorse over the increasing control China has established over their countries through the investments they made in ports and roads. So all that liberalizing the economy is really doing is feeding the CPC. China will never embrace democracy. Why should they? They're well-fed. They've never known democracy, and their previous experience with democratic societies was under the Eight Nation Alliance which exploited them. If the Chinese people are happy living under the Communist regime, hey, more power to them. But I don't want to live by Chinese rules. You may not have noticed that I said "any US company," by which I meant companies like Activision Blizzard, Disney, and the NBA which aren't under direct Chinese control but are Sinitizing their products at the expense of Americans.
I tend to agree that they're st their most authoritarian right now. But, I also see a (relative) lot of my push back from the Chinese people. So, I don't think all hope is lost for China.
Evolve 2 please
Essay Pro