Marvelous has confirmed it’s ending its partnership with Tencent, and cancelling a Story of Seasons mobile game that had been in the works since 2019.
The publisher, best known for Story of Seasons and Rune Factory, announced on 31st July that its board had voted to terminate the alliance with Image Frame Investment, a Hong Kong-based Tencent subsidiary. Image Frame bought a 20 percent stake in Marvelous back in May 2020 for around £48 million ($65m), becoming its largest shareholder in the process.
Tencent has consequently pulled the plug on a mobile Story of Seasons game that’s been sitting in development since a licensing deal was first signed in March 2019, citing “business environment and profitability” as the reason for the cancellation.
The underlying 2019 licence agreement survives the split so there’s technically nothing stopping Marvelous going after a different mobile partner for Story of Seasons down the line, and crucially, there’s no reason to presume Story of Seasons’ upcoming console game has been affected by any of this.
It comes just weeks after we learned Chinese multimedia conglomerate Tencent was reportedly re-considering its stakes in several Japanese video game developers, including Rune Factory and Monster Hunter Stories creator Marvelous.
Tencent Holdings is currently negotiating exits from a number of its Japanese games companies as part of a global re-assessment of its portfolio while the industry remains in the midst of an economical slump.
Last year, Tencent and Ubisoft partnered to create Vantage Studios, a subsidiary that now holds many of Ubisoft’s biggest franchises, and offers the sort of scope Tencent believes growth (and healthy revenue) can still come from.
