The Polish video games industry is having quite a busy fall, and in fact, a busy and fruitful year overall. Gruby Entertainment, a Warsaw-based independent game developer, announced that Tencent acquired minority shares of the company.
Related: Tencent makes a minority investment in Mordhau developer Triternion
Gruby’s CEO Grzegorz Michalak said the gaming firm will maintain complete creative and operational autonomy and they’ll use Tencent’s backing to grow the company’s headcount and scope of its games.
Michalak shared the message below following Tencent’s investment in the company:
“Gruby Entertainment studio celebrates its second anniversary this month, and we cannot imagine a better acknowledgment of our work than maintaining a long-term relationship with one of the world’s most significant and technologically oriented companies.
“It was always our goal to deliver high-calorie gameplay for hardcore players, and with Tencent’s backing, we are provided with extensive know-how and many new opportunities to expand our team and scope of our games.”
The Polish company was founded back in 2020 by Grzegorz Michalak, Kamil Misiowiec, Paweł Siech, and Karol Szyszka. Gruby Entertainment’s first video game, Deadlink, will enter early access on October 18 via Steam. The independent developer describes Deadlink as a “cyberpunk FPS with rogue-lite elements”; the game will be published by SuperGG.com.
The fall of 2022 saw CD Projekt’s Joint-CEO Marcin Iwinski’s announcement of stepping down (by the end of the year), as well as CD Projekt Red unveiling 5 new Witcher games, a Cyberpunk game, and a new IP. The Polish gaming giant also announced a story DLC for Cyberpunk 2077, dubbed Phantom Liberty.
Meanwhile, Take-Two Interactive terminated the publishing agreement for Project Dagger, which was being developed by Polish game maker People Can Fly.
Meanwhile, Tencent continues to make minor investments across the European gaming market, but per reliable sources, Tencent may shift its focus to acquiring the majority stakes in video game companies in the near future.
