Heavy Rain and Detroid: Become Human developer Quantic Dream has been acquired by Chinese online services company and game developer and publisher NetEase.
Quantic dream will now be a subsidiary of NetEase, but they assure fans that they will retain their creative freedoms. In a statement announcing the acquisition, Quantic Dream writes:
We met NetEase about 4 years ago and offered them to join us as a minority shareholder in January 2019. During this time, we have learned a lot about each other. We started working together on small and large projects, we enjoyed working together and discussed a lot about our sector and our vision for the future. We discovered that we share the same desire to create bold, highly qualitative work that makes an impression.
To continue to evolve and dream big, as we embark on “our next 25 years”, we are delighted to announce that we will be joining NeEase Games, which is becoming a 100% shareholder of Quantic Dream. We will retain our independence in terms of our editorial line, the artistic direction of our projects and the management of the studio. Our teams, who are fully involved in this operation and who benefit directly financially, are of course fully preserved and will continue to grow and strengthen.
The acquisition follows on from a minority investment made by NetEase in 2019, as part of the the Chinese publisher’s efforts to expand and invest in Western game developers and companies – they also invested $100 million in Bungie the year prior. Prior to this shift in focus, NetEase had developed a number of games targeting the Chinese market, as well as partnering with the likes of Blizzard to run Chinese versions of their games, such as World of Warcraft, StarCraft II, and Overwatch. NetEase has also been founding a number of new studios around the world, including Nagoshi Studio and the Austin, Texas-based Jackalope Games.
Through their 25 year history, Quantic Dream spent a long period tied to the PlayStation platform, releasing Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human as part of a three-game deal with Sony. Since then, they’ve reverted to fully independent development, most recently announcing that they are working on Star Wars Eclipse and reportedly returning to a PS4 tech demo called The Dark Sorcerer as inspiration for another game.
Source: Quantic Dream