Bungie announces new $100m partnership with NetEase

Games developer Bungie – of Halo and Destiny fame – has announced that they are entering a new partnership with Chinese publisher NetEase to produce a new game for them. For that goal, Bungie will receive funding in height of $100 million. A pretty big sum.

So far not much else has been revealed in terms of what Bungie is going to work on explicitly. Bungie’s statement in fact was worded very broadly:

“Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve entered into a new partnership with NetEase to help us explore new directions. With their industry expertise, they’ll empower us to build new worlds and invite players, new and old, to join us there. They’ll help us support separate teams inside Bungie to bring our newest ambitions to life.”

While Bungie has not released any of their games in mainland China yet, and this new partnership seems like a first step towards that goal,  studio boss Pete Parsons would not confirm this according to gamesindustry.biz. With “Games as a Service” or in short GaaS seemingly gaining  the interest of triple-A publishers, the very lucrative and big Chinese market will undoubtedly become an important place for publishers to release their products in.

Now, this news might seem also interesting since Bungie has no intentions of stepping away from their current juggernaut franchise Destiny. In an announcement on their own website, Bungie has made sure to reassure fans of Destiny that this new partnership will have no negative impacts on them:

“If you’re a player of Destiny, this news won’t impact the hobby you’ve come to know. Destiny is an experience that will grow for many years to come. We’ll continue to work with our partners at Activision to foster this global community and turn new players from all over the world into Guardians.”

Good news for fans of Destiny. For what this new cooperation will lead to in the future, we will have to wait.