Ex-Playground Games Head’s Studio Lighthouse Games Receives Investment from Tencent

Gavin Raeburn, co-founder and former head of Forza Horizon studio Playground Games, left the studio last year and established a new AAA team, which was unveiled earlier this year as Lighthouse Games. Currently still obviously in the nascent stages of its life, the studio has now also taken another big step forward, having secured major investment from Tencent.

Raeburn has also stated that in spite of the investment, Lighthouse Games will continue to excercise full control over all of its creative decisions.

“The investment is financial, and we retain control over our game and destiny as a studio, though we are also looking forward to forging strong links with Tencent,” he told GamesIndustry. “We’ve always prided ourselves on building excellent and trusted relationships with the publishers that we work with, and this will continue to be a priority moving forward. Our goal is to be the best at everything we do, and Tencent’s investment along with their continued support, will enable us to fulfil that ambition.”

Though there’s no specific information on what the investment amounts to, Raeburn says Lighthouse was in discussions with “a number of publishers”, but ultimately decided to partner with Tencent, because it “a deal that really matched [Lighthouse’s] vision.”

Raeburn has also said that the scale of the investment from Tencent will allow Lighthouse Games to grow its team while building its game from the ground-up “with no legacy tech or architecture to work around.”

“An investment of this scale allows us to grow our team and prove the vision for our game and remain completely independent, whilst still leveraging the skills and experience of one of the world’s largest video game publishers,” he said. “This new beginning also enables us to build our game from the ground up, with no legacy tech or architecture to work around.

“The shackles are off. It feels truly liberating.”

Lighthouse Games is currently working on an unannounced AAA project, though there’s no word on what it is.