SpatialOS Developer Improbable Gets $50m From Netease, Which Will Announce A Game Later This Year

We've talked about SpatialOS a few times before on MMOBomb. Most notably, Jagex is creating a new free-to-play game based on the tech. Now another big company in the F2P world is also jumping on board the SpatialOS train, to the tune of $50 million.

That's the amount Chinese behemoth Netease has shelled out to acquire shares in Improbable Worlds Ltd., the makers of SpatialOS. A partnership between the two companies was announced in February, and last week, Improbable CEO Herman Narula talked to GamesIndustry.biz about the investment, saying that it was done primarily to "encompass Asia more effectively, especially China because it's the largest games market in the world."

Narula also thinks that, with this investment and the creation of an Improbable office in China, it will allow "a small indie dev in the UK [to] be able to deploy your games on us and potentially even access the Chinese markets through partnerships as well."

While it seems like a lot of money to you and me, $50 million is actually pretty small, compared to some of the other amounts of cash that are being thrown Improbable's way, like a $502 million investment by Japan's SoftBank. So far, Worlds Adrift is the only game using SpatialOS that has reached consumers, but with that much invested in the company, news of others is surely on the way. An Improbable press release says "First NetEase game using SpatialOS technology to be announced later this year," so that news should come sooner rather than later.