Athlon Games Inc. is an American

video game publisher A video game publisher is a company that publishes video games that have been developed either internally by the publisher or externally by a video game developer. They often finance the development, sometimes by paying a video game developer ...

owned by Leyou and based in Los Angeles, California. Best known for acquiring a controlling stake in the successor to

Telltale Games Telltale Incorporated (trade name: Telltale Games) was an American video game developer based in San Rafael, California. The company was founded in July 2004 by former LucasArts developers Kevin Bruner, Dan Connors and Troy Molander, following ...

, while also publishing

SNK is a Japanese video gaming and interactive entertainment company. It was founded in 1978 as by Eikichi Kawasaki and began by developing arcade games. SNK is known for its Neo Geo arcade system on which the company established many franchises ...

's weapon-based fighting game ''

Samurai Shodown ''Samurai Shodown'', known in Japan as is a fighting game series by SNK. The series began in 1993 and is known for being one of the earliest in the genre with a primary focus on weapon-based combat. Plot The stories in the series take place i ...

'' outside of Japan and China in 2019. The company is currently set to co-publish '' The Wolf Among Us 2'' with Telltale.

History

On May 24, 2018, it was announced by Chinese

holding company A holding company is a company whose primary business is holding a controlling interest in the Security (finance), securities of other companies. A holding company usually does not produce goods or services itself. Its purpose is to own Share ...

Leyou that they had formed a new publishing division for PC and Consoles called Athlon Games, the company would be based in Los Angeles, California and would help co-publish games with other companies. In September 2018, Leyou had announced that they signed a deal with Middle-earth Enterprises to allow the company to develop and publish an online

free-to-play "Free-to-play" ("F2P" or "FtP") video games are games that give players access to a significant portion of their content for free. The term "free-to-play business model" or simply, "free-to-play model", refers collectively to business models tha ...

game based on ''

The Lord of the Rings ''The Lord of the Rings'' is an Epic (genre), epic high fantasy novel written by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's book ''The Hobbit'' but eventually d ...

.'' Amazon Game Studios (a division within

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

) would join the project in July 2019, and would agree to co-develop and also publish the game globally, with Athlon set to publish the game in China and Taiwan. Later that year Athlon had announced that they had become the publisher of ''

'' excluding in Japan and China, while also becoming a shareholder of LCG Entertainment, a company that had acquired the assets of

, while also announcing that they'd become the future co-publisher of all upcoming Telltale titles, starting with the release of Batman: Shadows Edition in December 2019. In December 2020, it was announced by Leyou that they'd be acquired by

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. ( zh, s=腾讯, p=Téngxùn) is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimed ...

under their Image Frame Investment subsidiary. On April 17, 2021, after several years in development, Tencent and Amazon had announced that when they had been in contract negotiations for the planned ''The Lord of the Rings'' game, a dispute had begun between the two, ultimately causing Amazon to cancel the planned title.

Games

References

External links

Official website
{{Tencent 2018 establishments in California American companies established in 2018 American subsidiaries of foreign companies Companies based in Los Angeles Tencent Games Video game companies based in California Video game companies established in 2018