Back 4 Blood released to general acclaim, with most calling it a worthy, if flawed, successor to the legacy of Left 4 Dead and its sequel. Since then its developer, Turtle Rock Studios, has made improvements, such as unlocking all the characters and improving bots.
There was a lot riding on Back 4 Blood for Turtle Rock, seeing as it only had a few other games under its belt. While this includes the original Left 4 Dead and some Counter-Strike titles, the other was Evolve, which failed to meet expectations. It seems that Back 4 Blood did well enough that Turtle Rock garnered the attention of a powerful benefactor.
Tencent, the communications conglomerate that has its fingers firmly entrenched in the gaming market, has now acquired Turtle Rock Studios to add to its growing stable of game developers. According to Tencent, Turtle Rock will retain the rights to its game properties and will continue to develop and maintain them as it sees fit. Statements from both companies indicate mutual respect and satisfaction with the arrangement. With this setup, hopefully, progress like the recent Back 4 Blood patch overhauling difficulty and more will continue to be the norm.
On its own, this is nothing particularly troubling. The influx of money can potentially keep Back 4 Blood alive and well long enough to become a classic like Left 4 Dead 2 with potential support going on for years. The only cause for concern for some players is the increasing ubiquity of Tencent in the gaming sphere, as it already has a hand in some very popular games. While Tencent purchasing Wake Up Interactive might not be a red flag, it being both a heavy investor in Epic and the owner of Riot Games may cause some alarm.
The reason behind that concern is not because of the new business opportunities Tencent's wealth presents, far from it. The news of a former Blizzard dev forming a studio under Tencent could well be cause for celebration if it leads to new, quality RTS titles in the future.
Much of the concern comes from the idea of more games with cash-grab features being placed where they don't belong. So far there have been few noticible trends towards disaster, and things like Playtonic expanding its studio are undeniably good results of Tencent's investments. Only time will tell though whether this ultimately means better games for all or a bad situation for players.
Back 4 Blood is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.