Rumors Claim Tencent Bought Bohemia Interactive, Employees Refute Claim

So here’s some spicy beats.

Tencent, the Chinese-based investment firm that has slowly been consuming every studio in the gaming industry, is again on the warpath, it seems. Fresh off the purchase of Funcom and System Shock 3, a report has come in from The Information that their next big target is Bohemia Interactive, a Czech-based studio best known for ARMA 3 and DayZ.

According to this report, Tencent would get a ”majority share” of Bohemia Interactive at the low, low cost of 230 million dollars. This makes sense, as Bohemia Interactive actually has a history with Tencent – in 2018 they partnered with them to publish their latest game, Ylands, on their WeGame platform, bringing the game to China – however, there were no talks of ownership or purchasing at the time.

Here’s where it gets spicy: not long after The Information released its article, several people working within Boehmia Interactive went to Twitter to refute the claims: specifically, to say that their CEO had told them that morning that the article was completely false and that they weren’t working with Tencent.

Here’s dev Ivan Buchta:
 

Just for information, news about @bohemiainteract being acquired by Tencent are NOT true. BI remains independent and keeps working on its very Bohemian games. Now back to making some... :)

Encouraging news, right? Well… maybe. I very much doubt that these rumors just came out of nowhere, and it’s very much in-character for CEOs to lie about and deny deals, past or present, that they may be trying to hammer out. I would be willing to bet that there’s at least a kernel of truth in this news – either this was an old deal that fell through, or they’re still in the process of trying to work something out.

But of Tencent wants Bohemia Interactive, it’s hard to imagine they won’t get it.