Chinese entertainment giant Tencent has acquired nine per cent of UK-based Elite Dangerous developer Frontier.

The deal is worth £17.7m, with Tencent purchasing 3.37m newly-issued ordinary shares. Prior to the deal, Frontier had £12.6m in cash reserves.

Frontier says that this will help the company grow in China, currently the biggest games industry in the world.

With this deal, Frontier joins the likes of Activision, Riot, Epic Games, Supercell, Miniclip and Glu Mobile in Tencent’s line-up of video game investments.

"Tencent is the market leader in the online games industry in China and operating a premium PC games distribution platform, WeGame," said David Braben, Frontier’s CEO, in a statement.

"This strategic investment will both help drive our scale up, and improve access and accelerate our growth into the key Chinese market. Tencent will be a powerful partner for Frontier, in what will soon be the world's largest market for entertainment."

Tencent’s chief strategy officer James Mitchell added: “Frontier’s teams utilize highly scalable game engine technology, decades of development experience, and increasingly sophisticated live operations skills to provide highly-engaged players with complex and beautiful game worlds.”