Shift Up, the maker of the popular game Stellar Blade, has jumped from making mobile games to creating a big hit triple-A game. They are now working on a new Stellar Blade game and still making their old mobile games. The studio looks set to do well in the future.
But, this good news is a bit dimmed by worries from some company investors. They are scared that Shift Up might not get to make its own choices anymore. This makes people unsure of what will happen next. A report from South Korea's Global Economic talked about these fears, especially looking at how the shares are split between Shift Up's boss, Hyung-Tae Kim, and the big tech company Tencent.
Right now, Hyung-Tae Kim has 39% of the studio. Tencent is close, with 34.58%. Investors worry that Tencent might buy more shares, pass Kim, and take over. And since Tencent also puts out Shift Up's mobile games, there's fear that the studio might not be free to do as it wishes.
Tencent has been putting money into many game companies for a long time. They own parts of famous places like Ubisoft, Remedy, Epic Games, Funcom, and Kadokawa (which owns FromSoftware). For example, after Tencent put more money into Riot Games, they ended up owning it all.
While it's too early to tell if Tencent will buy Shift Up soon, the setup is interesting. Given Tencent's big role in making money from Shift Up's mobile games and its nearly top share status, it's not strange that some think Tencent might add Shift Up to its big list of game studios.
