And yet another games studio gets snatched up by DeNA: today, DeNA announced it plans to acquire Punch Entertainment, a Hanoi-based game studio that’s owned by a Palo-Alto based company of the same name (website). Until now, the American HQ was responsible for design, art, engineering and QA, while DeNA acquires the team handling engineering, art, and QA from Vietnam.
The background for this acquisition is that talent in these fields has become rare in Japan, good engineers in particular are hard to find, even for companies like DeNA. After closing the buy-out this month, the 50 people in the Vietnam team are supposed to support the Tokyo office with building first party games for Mobage going forward.
DeNA president Isao Moriyasu is quoted as saying that “the acquisition also underscores our commitment to support the game developers’ community in Vietnam.”
