Chinese tech and entertainment giant Tencent has made its first video games investment of 2019.
The firm has taken a stake in Swedish developer Fatshark, best known for its Warhammer: Vermintide series. The official size of Tencent's investment has not been announced, but Swedish outlet DI Digital reckons that the Chinese firm owns 36 per cent of Fatshark and paid 500m kronor ($56m).
"We are excited to announce that Tencent has chosen to invest in Fatshark," CEO Martin Wahlund (pictured) told GamesIndustry.biz.
"Tencent is known for investing in market leading top rated companies. With the investment, Fatshark is in a strong position to continue to grow while staying independent. Our unaltered mission will be to bring high-quality games to our fans around the globe."
Vermintide 2 hit PC in March 2018, selling half a million copies in its first two days on shelves.
Speaking to PCGamesinsider.biz at GDC, Wahlund said that the title had generated more revenue in its first two weeks in the wild than the original game across PC, PS4 and Xbox One to date.
In its first five weeks, Vermintide 2 had sold one million copies.
We caught up with Wahlund to see what Fatshark had learnt from the first Vermintide game and what its plans for the second were longer term. Towards the end of 2018, the firm said it wanted to be working on this project for "five to ten years". This will no doubt be one reason why Tencent has decided to buy up a slice of the developer, given that it loves service-based project