Men of War: Assault Squad 2 and Reverie Knights Tactics publisher 1C Entertainment has been acquired by Chinese gaming conglomerate Tencent.
1C Entertainment is a game publisher that has been in the business for well over a decade. One of its more noteworthy successes was with King's Bounty: The Legend, which launched a continuation of New World Computing's 90's PC game that took inspiration from the Heroes of Might and Magic series, spawning several sequels. That was followed up by King's Bounty 2 12 years later as they attempted to reboot it as more of a major rpg, with changes to the core mechanics.
This company is about more than the modern King's Bounty games, though; it most recently published Reverie Knights Tactics late last month. Now, this long-running Polish game publisher will be falling under the umbrella of Tencent.
Tencent Acquisition of 1C Entertainment Will Be Rebranded
Tencent's acquisition of 1C Entertainment was announced earlier today, although the deal in question was finalized all the way back in November 2021. As with most corporate things, this situation gets a little complicated on the business side of things.
1C Entertainment (which publishes games) is owned by a parent company called "1C." The deal involves Tencent taking on all shares that were previously owned by 1C, ultimately making Tencent the majority shareholder.
"We are truly excited by this deal. It is an amazing opportunity for 1CE to achieve our wildest dreams and aspirations in the video games business." 1C Entertainment management board member Tomasz Nieszporski said in the announcement."Our vision and passion will be now backed by a leading global games company, and I am humbled by the unique chance of working together with Tencent and the other top creative minds that are part of its global ecosystem."
Tencent's acquisition of 1C Entertainment also comes with a somewhat unusual stipulation -- 1C Entertainment (and all of its subsidiaries with "1C" in their names) are going to be rebranded sometime within the first six months after the deal's completion; this is probably due to the fact that its parent company 1C will continue to develop business software. More details about the rebranding will be made available at a later date.
There's one more interesting part about this acquisition: since it also includes 1C Entertainment's subsidiaries, Tencent will add the company QLOC to its portfolio, too -- a company that specializes in co-development, testing, and localization which has been used by EA, Capcom, and CD Projekt Red (among others). For now, you can explore the decades-long catalog of games published by 1C Entertainment on Steam.
