Chinese video game giant NetEase Games announced its acquisition of French studio Quantic Dream, the developer behind popular interactive video games like Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human. Per an official press release, Quantic Dream will continue to operate independently and focus on creating and publishing games for all platforms. The studio is also expected to support and publish third-party titles while using NetEase’s development capabilities.
Quantic Dream founder, CEO, and writer-director David Cage had this to say on the acquisition:
“Today marks an important milestone for our studio after a quarter century of complete independence. NetEase Games values our creative freedom and the drive and passion of our uniquely diverse team. We will now be able to accelerate the vision we share as a group, of creating landmark titles that touch people on an emotional level. We have highly differentiated games in the making and I truly believe that the best is yet to come from Quantic Dream.”
NetEase Games’ last major studio acquisition was in October 2021, when the company bought Suda51’s Grasshopper Manufacture from GungHo Online Entertainment. Besides this, NetEase has recently seen incredible success with its latest free-to-play mobile game venture, Diablo Immortal. The publisher currently has seven titles scheduled for release sometime in the future.
As for Quantic Dream, the French studio recently made waves when it announced its next project with Lucasfilm Games, Star Wars Eclipse. Star Wars Eclipse is an action-adventure game first unveiled at The Game Awards 2021 with a trailer. It is currently in development and will feature multiple playable characters with various branching narratives, a staple of the Quantic Dream brand. However, it remains to be seen if the game will follow the interactive media aspect notable in previous Quantic Dream games. If rumors are to be believed, this will be the first QD game to not operate under the point-and-click adventure archetype.
Star Wars Eclipse is part of the High Republic multimedia series of projects set 200 years before the events of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.
