Life is Strange creator Dontnod has secured new funding to self-publish future games, sparking speculation it is no longer aligned with Square Enix, the publisher which oversees the Life is Strange franchise.
Yesterday, Dontnod announced a €30m (£26.5m) financing deal with Chinese tech giant Tencent for “new self-published intellectual properties” – a plan first mentioned to GamesIndustry.biz in an interview last November.
Dontnod has worked with various publishers in the past, including Focus Home Interactive for Vampyr and Xbox for Tell Me Why, though it ultimately self-published its most recent game Twin Mirror after an initial publishing deal with Bandai Namco was dropped.
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Life is Strange is the studio’s most popular creation, though there has been uncertainty for a while over Dontnod’s future with it.
In a surprising move last year, numerous key members of the original Life is Strange development team announced they had splintered from Dontnod’s main Paris studio to form a new branch in Montreal. A few months later, we heard confirmation this team was working on a new franchise – and not Life is Strange.