Dontnod Entertainment has told IGN that it refused “several” acquisition offers in order to maintain its independence and identity. Additionally, the developer has said that while it doesn’t rule any possibilities out, Life Is Strange isn’t part of its current strategy.
CEO Oskar Guilbert said:
To be honest, we refused several proposals. There are a lot of people who are interested [in] the game industry and see the game industry as a new El Dorado for investing. We raised 40 million euros in January. But for us, it was really important that the historic shareholders still have the majority, and still can keep the company independent. That’s something really important for us.
The values, the kind of games we want to do — it’s really important for us that we keep this identity of the company for the future. I don’t want to be pretentious, but we’re one of the game companies which do these kinds of games — like Life is Strange, like Tell Me Why, and Vampyr also in a sense. We really want to continue doing this. And we are lucky because our current partners, our people who put a lot of money in our company still let us do what we want to do.
Guilbert reiterated that Dontnod plans to build its own IPs going forward. He acknowledged that the studio is known for Life Is Strange, but hopes that it’ll be known for more than that going forward.
Life Is Strange is owned by Square Enix. Its upcoming installment is being developed by Deck Nine.
