Tencent is back at it again and has snapped up a minority stack in Voodoo. In case you are unaware as to what a “Voodoo” is, it’s a group or team that focuses on making “hyper-casual mobile games” that include titles like Purple Diver and Baseball Boy.
As for Voodoo’s background, the French video game developer that also doubles over as a publisher is based in Paris, France. Founded in 2013 by Alexandre Yazdi and LaurentRitter, the team focuses on free-to-play “hyper-casual games” for Android and iOS devices.
Reports claim that Voodoo’s games have accrued over 2 billion downloads as of April 2019, which was topped In December 2019 by its 2.6 billion download milestone. The company is also responsible for 300 million monthly active users, and “1 billion individual players.”
Titles that have been released by Voodoo include Helix Jump, Baseball Boy, Snake vs. Block, Hole.io, Aquapark.io, and Purple Diver.
With the aforesaid numbers in the equation, it’s not hard to see why Tencent would want a minority stake in Voodoo. Moreover, here’s what Voodoo CEO Yazdi had to say about Tencent acquiring said stake in his company via Twitter:
“I am thrilled to announce a major milestone in the history of Voodoo, with the arrival of @TencentGlobal as a minority shareholder. Thank you to our amazing team for the great work, excited about the future.”
As per ft.com, we learn that Tencent and Voodoo’s deal sits at $1.4 billion, but specifics on value or percentage have not been divulged. However, we know that this minority stake will allow Voodoo to expand beyond “hyper-casual games” and into “casual games.”
With that said, here’s the latest list of video game studios and other companies that Tencent has a Stake in as of August 2020:
- Riot Games – 100%
- Sharkmob – 100%
- Supercell – 84.3%
- Grinding Gear Games – 80%
- Epic Games – 40%
- Fatshark – 36%
- Stunlock Studios – 31%
- Glu Mobile – 21%
- Funcom – 29%
- Marvelous – 20%
- Netmarble – 17.6%
- Kakao – 13.5%
- Tesla Motors – 12%
- Bluehole – 10%
- Sumo Group and Sumo Digital – 10%
- Frontier Developments – 9%
- Ubisoft – 5%
- Activision Blizzard – 5%
- Paradox Interactive – 5%
- Yager – undisclosed minority stake
- Voodoo – undisclosed minority stake
- PlatinumGames – undisclosed capital investment
As seen above, Tencent has a hand in a lot of well-known companies. Nevertheless, other popular services such as Reddit and Discord have received funding from Tencent too:
- Reddit – received $150 million investment from Tencent early in 2019 (2020 payment unknown)
- Discord – received $158 million in funding in 2018 from Tencent (2019 and 2020 payments unknown)
You can learn more about Tencent’s deal with Voodoo by hitting up ft.com.
