NetEase Games announced they have acquired French studio Quantic Dream in their latest buyout.
Quantic Dream is known for their cinematic titles like Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human. Their latest titles include Star Wars: Eclipse and publishing games like Under the Waves.
This is NetEase’s first European studio, and Quantic Dream will keep operating independently making games for all platforms – as well as assist in supporting and publishing third-party games.
Here’s some comments from key staff:
NetEase CEO and director William Ding
We are thrilled to embark on an exciting new stage of growth with Quantic Dream, bound by our shared vision, mutual trust and respect. NetEase will continue to fulfil our promise to support Quantic Dream to realise its full potential. By combining the wild creativity and exceptional narrative focus of Quantic Dream with NetEase’s powerful facilities, resources and execution capabilities, we believe there are infinite possibilities that could re-define the interactive entertainment experience we provide for players worldwide.
Quantic Dream founder, CEO, and writer-director David Cage
Today marks an important milestone for our studio after a quarter century of complete independence. NetEase Games values our creative freedom and the drive and passion of our uniquely diverse team. We will now be able to accelerate the vision we share as a group, of creating landmark titles that touch people on an emotional level. We have highly differentiated games in the making and I truly believe that the best is yet to come from Quantic Dream. I am particularly proud that our employees, who were offered a significant share of our capital over the past years, will fully benefit from this acquisition. It is a testimony to our continued commitment to reward all those who have made Quantic Dream the successful studio it is today.
Quantic Dream co-CEO and head of publishing Guillaume de Fondaumiere
NetEase Games first invested in Quantic Dream three years ago. Over this period, we had the opportunity to work closely together and saw first-hand how like-minded and complementary we are. NetEase Games’ acquisition comes as a natural evolution in this process and creates a unique opportunity to boost Quantic Dream’s growth by giving our production and publishing teams all the necessary means to excel.