Dauntless - Phoenix Labs Acquired by Garena
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An open letter from Jesse Houston, the CEO of Phoenix Labs, informs us that his studio was acquired by Garena, a Singapore-based publisher specializing in mobile titles. According to the letter, this acquisition should lead to a bigger and better Dauntless, and a much wider audience for Phoenix Labs’ free to play Monster Hunter-style co-operative action-RPG. Check it out:
As Phoenix Labs begins a new year and a new decade! We’ve been reflecting on how amazing and inspiring the Dauntless journey has been. This time last year we were gearing up to launch Dauntless on consoles and the Epic Games Store. Since then, we’ve launched on Nintendo Switch and watched our community grow to over 20 million players. From all of us here at Phoenix Labs, thank you for helping make Dauntless one of the largest online RPG success stories of all time.
Looking forward to 2020 and beyond, our goals are even more ambitious. We want Dauntless to be one of the best games ever, which is why today we have some very exciting news to share with you:
Today, Garena and Phoenix Labs will be officially joining forces.
Garena is a digital entertainment company and one of the largest forces for gaming in Southeast Asia. More importantly, they are one of our longest-running investors – one that we’ve considered a close partner for years. They share our vision for connecting gamers worldwide and creating lasting franchises. For reference, they make Free Fire, the most downloaded mobile game in the world in 2019. They also publish games like Call of Duty®: Mobile, Arena of Valor, and League of Legends to millions of players across the globe.
For you, our valuable community, this change means we’re able to continue to add even more to Dauntless! More Behemoths, more weapons, more features like Escalation – in short, more of everything. This includes expanding to new regions and new platforms.
I realize that announcements like this can sound daunting at first (no pun intended), but I’m excited to say that that Dauntless and Phoenix Labs have an incredible, promising future. This studio is a family, and everyone here is excited to welcome the wonderful people at Garena into it.
If you have any questions, please let us know. We love hearing from you!
Clear Skies, Slayers!
Jesse “GTez” Houston
CEO and Co-Founder – Phoenix Labs
Then, you might also be interested in this GamesIndustry.biz interview with the man that sheds some light on this sudden and somewhat unexpected acquisition. An excerpt:
"Yes, in so far as the Garena folks are largely going to leave us alone and will bankroll our growth," Houston says. "One of the things I've been really lucky is have is great access to talent. I love my team, easily the best team I've ever built in my life. And our growth in terms of hiring folks has been limited entirely by our budget and our capitalization. Garena has seen that, and is super into enabling us to grow in the directions we want.
"In terms of other games, we're entirely focused on Dauntless right now. There's still a lot of game to be built. Our goal with Dauntless is to make it into the best free-to-play MMO in the history of video games, and we're still on a path there. I think we'll continue to focus on Dauntless for the foreseeable future and grow to support our future ambitions."
As for why now was the right time to sell Phoenix Labs, Houston says it wasn't due to investor pressure. As a venture-backed company, Phoenix Labs would eventually have to create a payday for its investors, Houston says. And while "the clock was ticking to some degree," he believes it's preferable to sell before that pressure ramps up.
"There are great times to sell a team," Houston says. "And if we were going to, you definitely want to be doing it when your game is doing well. You never want to sell when you need to sell, and Dauntless is going great this year. We're also still at the scale where we can be relatively picky on who the potential acquirers are."
