Chinese giant Tencent acquires British game company Sumo for 1.1 billion euros

The Chinese tech giant Tencent is acquiring the British Sumo Group for 919 million pounds, converted around 1.1 billion euros. Sumo’s 14 studios have collaborated on numerous major games, including those in the Forza Horizon series, Hitman, and LittleBigPlanet.

Tencent and Sumo Group have reached an agreement on the acquisition, Reuters writes. The Chinese Tencent already had an 8.75 percent share in the British company and now wants to take it over in its entirety. Sumo Group owns Sumo Digital and all associated studios. The British game company has a total of 14 studios and more than 1,200 employees, according to Reuters.

Sumo studios often collaborate with other developers on games. The company has contributed to the Forza Horizon games, Forza Motorsport 7, Crackdown 3 and Hitman 2. Sumo Digital is also known for LittleBigPlanet 3 and Sackboy: A Big Adventure. These games are made in collaboration with Sony, exclusively for PlayStation consoles. It is not yet known what the consequences of the takeover will be.

Sumo Digital was founded in 2003 by four former Infogrames employees. The Chinese Tencent Holdings is one of the world’s largest tech companies and, for example, owner of social networks, search engines and chat apps for the Asian market. It is the largest game company in the world in terms of revenue. Those earnings come mainly from free-to-play games. In recent years, Tencent has bought or acquired a stake in numerous studios and game companies.

Tencent owns Riot Games, known for League of Legends. TiMi Studios is also owned by Tencent. That is the studio behind the billion-dollar smartphone games Call of Duty: Mobile, Honor of Kings and Arena of Valor. Tencent also owns 40 percent of Epic Games. Tencent’s total turnover last year was about 62 billion euros. Of this, 20 billion euros came from games.