Stellar Blade has been a huge success for its independent developer, Shift Up, which was previously a mobile game developer before it embarked on making a triple-A action game. With a sequel confirmed to be on the way, and Shift Up still working on the mobile series that helped grow the studio in the first place, the future should be incredibly bright for Shift Up.
And it largely still is, but some of the company's investors are fearful that Shift Up could lose its independence, putting a fog over the future of the studio and its current path. According to a report from the South Korean publication Global Economic (spotted by Automaton), Shift Up's investors are concerned with how narrow the split is between Shift Up chief executive officer Hyung-Tae Kim's shares and Tencent's.
Hyung-Tae Kim currently owns 39% of the studio, while Tencent is just under 5% behind him, owning 34.58% of Shift Up. The concern is that Tencent could overtake Hyung-Tae Kim by buying up more shares, and combined with the fact that Tencent is the company Shift Up works with to publish its mobile games, the studio could lose its power to make decisions for itself.
Tencent has been making strategic investments in companies across the video game industry for years now, with their fingers in the pies of studios like Ubisoft, Remedy, Epic Games, Funcom, and FromSoftware's parent company Kadokawa. In the case of Riot Games, Tencent outright bought the studio after consistently increasing its stake.
It's still too early to tell if Shift Up is in real trouble of being acquired by Tencent, but considering that Tencent is a key factor in Shift Up's revenue through the studio's mobile games, and how close Tencent is to being the studio's largest shareholder, it does feel like Tencent is primed to add Shift Up to its internal portfolio of studios.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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