Tencent (OTC: TCEHY), the world's largest game publisher, recently took a stake in PlatinumGames, the Japanese developer of Bayonetta and Nier: Automata. This marks Tencent's first investment in a Japanese game company since 2014 when it took an undisclosed stake in Caravan Stories developer Aiming.
Tencent didn't disclose the size of its investment in PlatinumGames. However, the announcement was surprising, since co-founders Hideki Kamiya and Atsushi Inaba started pivoting Platinum toward becoming a self-funded publisher in 2017.
That decision came after Microsoft abruptly canceled Platinum's Scalebound in early 2017. The cancellation of the fantasy IP for the Xbox One and PC nearly bankrupted Platinum, but the studio was saved by robust sales of Nier: Automata, which was published by Square Enix (OTC: SQNXF) that same year.