Chinese Mobile Dev In Talks To Acquire 70% Of Digital Extremes' Owner Leyou Technologies

Earlier this year, I poked fun at people who panicked over the 3% acquisition of Digital Extremes by Perfect World Entertainment back in 2014. As it turned out, 58% (now 97%) of Digital Extremes was actually bought up by Leyou Technologies, which received significantly less attention. It could probably be argued that, under Leyou's watch, Digital Extremes has had its best years, tripling the player base for Warframe since 2014.

Now it's time to blindly panic again, as Leyou itself appears to be changing hands, as reported by Niko Partners Senior Analyst Douglas Ahmed:

Chinese games company iDreamsky has entered an MOU that states it plans to purchase 69.21% of Hong Kong listed Leyou Technology. Both companies suspended trading today.

Leyou are the owners of Digital Extremes, Splash Damage, Athlon Games and others. https://t.co/OzXmyyGB0m

— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) December 9, 2019

That link takes you to this page, which spells it all out in detail. Bloomberg calls iDreamSky "Tencent-backed" -- but really, what isn't these days? (according to this article from June 2018, Tencent holds 20.65% of iDreamSky's shares) -- and estimates Leyou's total value at approximately $1 billion USD.

This brings us to the "What will this mean for Warframe?" portion of our article, not to mention "What will this mean for Athlon Games' Lord of the Rings MMO?" The answer, as usual, is "virtually nothing." As was the case when Leyou bought Digital Extremes, the company didn't mess with the game or drive it into the ground, and it's not going to happen here.

The only issue would be if you're so violently anti-Tencent that you're going to quit Warframe because Tencent now owns a fifth of a company that owns seven-tenths of the company that owns the company you like -- that comes out to about 14% if you're wondering -- in which case, can I have your stuff?

A previous version of this article stated that Leyou currently owned 61% of Digital Extremes, not the current 97%. Thanks to sNtd in the comments for pointing out the error!