Splash Damage, the studio known for its work on Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Brink, Gears Tactics, and the cancelled Transformers: Reactivate, has parted ways with Tencent, and is now owned by private equity investors.
The studio confirmed the change in a statement provided to GamesIndustry, saying it will continue to operate under its current leadership team but would "not be providing further comment at this time."
Splash Damage has been around for nearly a quarter-century, having been founded by a group of mod makers in 2001. It debuted the following year with multiplayer maps for Return to Castle Wolfenstein—which, for the record, were excellent. That focus continued through projects including the Enemy Territory games, Brink, Dirty Bomb, and the multiplayer components of Gears of War 4 and Gears 5.
Chinese holding company Leyou acquired Splash Damage in 2016, and was then acquired itself by Tencent in 2020, which is how Splash Damage got there. But it hasn't had much success in the years since: Gears Tactics, released in 2020, was excellent but quickly forgotten, while Outcasters, also a 2020 release, was exclusive to Google Stadia and didn't survive that platform's shutdown.
The biggest blow came earlier this year, though, when Transformers: Reactivate, an online action game announced at the 2022 Game Awards, was cancelled. Splash Damage said at the time that layoffs were likely as a result of the cancellation. That was the last update on the studio's X feed until today, when it retweeted GameIndustry's coverage of the split from Tencent.
A struggling studio being shuffled off into the hands of private equity by a company famous for all the pies it has its fingers in might be seen as a bad sign, and, well, it is. But there is one X-factor hanging above it all. In 2023, Twitch streamers Mike "Shroud" Grzesiek and Chris "Sacriel" Ball announced that they were joining with Splash Damage to develop an open-world survival-shooter called Project Astrid. As far as I know, nothing's been heard of it since, but Ball still has the Project Astrid reveal pinned on his X profile, so presumably there's still movement on that front.
