Tencent Invests in Yager, Devs of Spec Ops: The Line
Chinese giant Tencent decided to invest in Yager. However, the company only intends to strengthen the company responsible for Spec Ops: The Line and The Cycle, and will not influence the policy of the German developer and publisher.
Yager announced today that it received a strategic minority investment from Tencent. The company creates and publishes its own games. New funds will be used to develop these activities, including The Cycle and new projects. The developer has thus joined other companies in which the Chinese giant has shares, such as Riot Games, Epic Games, Ubisoft, Supercell, Paradox Interactive, Frontier Developments and Miniclip.
- Yager is another company in which Tencent has invested.
- The new funds will help to expand activities related to the development and publishing of games.
- The investor does not intend to influence the management of the company or its plans.
This is how Timo Ullmann, CEO of Yager commented on the case:
"Tencent is not only the world's leading games company but also a prolific investor with a stellar track record. We're humbled to join the line-up of Tencent partners which reads like a games industry Who's Who. We're confident that this will greatly enhance the scope of our business, not just by getting access to Tencent's network and resources but by tapping the vast industry know-how Tencent possesses."
It is worth noting that the company does not intend to influence the structure or strategy of the developer. However, it is possible that the studio will be completely taken over in the future. Tencent wants to do the same with another developer, Funcom. Which everyone seems to be satisfied with.
Yager was founded in 1999 and despite more than 20 years on the market, it is still managed by its founders - Uwe Bennecke, Roman Golka, Philipp Schellbach, Timo Ullmann and Mathias Wiese. The debut game of the team was Yager, which was released in 2003. However, the studio's fame was earned by another title - Spec Ops: The Line. The game was to be a reboot of the Spec Ops series, but although it offered an interesting plot, inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, it did not meet financial expectations. Yager worked on Dead Island 2, but Deep Silver decided end the cooperation in 2015.
The Berlin-based company currently employs 110 developers and is mainly working on the development of the F2P online shooter The Cycle.
