Gabriel Stanford-ReisingerThe massive Chinese media company, Tencent, acquired a minority stake in Yooka-Laylee developer, Playtonic Games. The UK-based developer isn’t losing any ownership of their IPs with the stake. The developer, however, believes that with the help from Tencent, they will get the chance to ramp up production of several unannounced projects.
Gavin Price, the studio’s founder, issued a statement about the studio’s founding, its history, its success, its publishing arm, and above all, about his excitement to work with Tencent and scale unannounced “super-secret” projects.
“Six years ago we built a cool, exciting rocket ship, set a course we think is right and exciting. We are thrilled that Tencent agrees with that course and has provided some rocket fuel to further the reach of our mission! The countdown to today has included (deep inhale)… our record breaking Kickstarter for Yooka-Laylee, growing the buddy-duo’s reach with the acclaimed Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair, establishing Playtonic Friends and the successful launch of its first three titles—BPM: Bullets Per Minute, A Little Golf Journey, and Demon Turf, signing three further incredible beauties in L’il gator Game, Victory Heat Rally, and Blossom Tales 2: The Minotaur Prince, and all the while still being cool (ask our parents)! BUT with Tencent’s help we can scale up and fast-track the super-exciting, super-secret projects we’ve been keeping close to our treasure chests too… things are going to get Bat Ship Crazy over the next few years! Please imagine a wink emoji right now.
Playtonic Games was established in 2014 comprised of a fair few former Rare staffers. Their debut title was Yooka-Laylee, which paid homage to one of Rare’s most notable properties, Banjo-Kazooie, which in and of itself hasn’t seen a new game since 2008.