Tencent acquires League of Legends developer

League of Legends developer Riot Games has been acquired by Chinese online services company, Tencent, which has worked closely with the developer and acted as Chinese distributor since November 2008.

Tencent has slowly scaled up involvement with Riot Games over the years, becoming an investor back in 2009, but has now bought the company wholly for $400 million USD.

Tencent's deal with Riot Games apparently leaves the studio with a lot of autonomy, with Riot CEO Brandon Beck telling Gamasutra that Tencent will act more as an investor than a parent company.

'Riot is going to remain completely independent. There are no redundancies, no layoffs, no synergy fishing, no leadership change,' Brandon said.

'Nothing is going to change other than they're dramatically increasing their holding in the company. They see this more as an investment in a partner.'

Riot Games has only released one game thus far, League of Legends, though it has over a million players every month. We, however, didn't like it - check our League of Legends review for more information.

Let us know your thoughts in the forums.