With all of the news of video game studio acquisitions that flew around in the month of January, some longtime followers of certain studios might be a bit worried that the right-sized stack of cash will mean ownership changes hands. In the case of Elite: Dangerous studio Frontier Developments, that doesn’t appear to be something that’ll happen anytime soon if CEO and founder David Braben has anything to say about it.
Quotes from Braben in a piece from the Financial Times state that his studio can’t be bought up by anyone, as the 33% stake he and his wife have in FDev acts as a “natural barrier” against any buyout attempt despite being seen as an acquisition target and having a currently low share price; readers will recall that Tencent had already bout 9% of the studio in 2017. The piece otherwise quotes Braben as saying it’s a “real shame” that UK game studios aren’t being invested in by the country and are being bought up by overseas firms.
Meanwhile, in more immediate E:D news, Update 11’s release, which is set to have things like Fleet Carrier interiors and another round of fixes, has delayed a bit, moving instead to a March 8th launch. The Odyssey expansion has otherwise seen a small hotfix to address stability issues.
