Tencent’s takeover of Techland apparently cost $1.6 billion USD
In July 2023, Chinese gaming giant Tencent acquired a majority stake in Techland, the Polish developer behind the Dying Light series, at an undisclosed price. According to new numbers from Poland, the transaction is estimated to have cost Tencent around $1.6 billion USD. Last year, this was the biggest acquisition in the entire country.
Techland has at least 400 employees with offices in Warsaw and Wrocław, but this seems like it’s quite a steep price for a single studio regardless of its impressive size, especially since the company’s output hasn’t been the greatest in the last couple of years.
A screenshot from Dying Light 2, Techland's latest release.
Techland
A price of $1.6 billion USD would make the Techland takeover the 14th-largest acquisition in the games industry ahead of Tencent’s 2020 takeover of Leyou and the Bandai Namco merger from 2005. Naturally, Microsoft is leading this particular ranking with its 2023 Activision Blizzard deal worth over $68 billion USD.
Techland’s latest release is the survival horror RPG Dying Light 2 from 2022, a sequel to 2015’s Dying Light. Further in the past, the developer created Wild West FPS game Call of Juarez and the zombie survival game Dead Island.
It is continuing to work post-launch support and content for Dying Light 2 as well as an untitled open-world fantasy RPG, which is going to be Techland’s first new IP in almost a decade.
