Garena acquires Dauntless developer Phoenix Labs

Garena, the digital entertainment arm of global consumer internet company Sea Limited, has acquired Dauntless developer Phoenix Labs, the company announced.

The companies intend to work together to continue building Phoenix Labs’ development team, add new features to Dauntless by continuing to add new features, and explore new growth opportunities in markets such as Asia and Latin America, as well as on mobile.

“Our partners at Garena have been our most steadfast supporters since the early days of Phoenix Labs, and we are excited to join forces with a global games leader,” said Phoenix Labs CEO and co-founder Jesse Houston in a press release. “With this next step, we’re able to ensure that we can provide the best possible experience for Dauntless players around the world. We’re extremely excited about what the future holds for Phoenix Labs, as we continue to support our ever-growing Dauntless community and explore future games.”

Sea Limited founder and group chief executive officer Forrest Li added, “We couldn’t be happier to welcome Phoenix Labs to the Garena family. Over the last few years, we have watched Phoenix Labs mature into one of the best development teams in the business and launch a hugely exciting title in Dauntless. We also know that they share our mission of making great games, creating the best teams, and putting players first. Our skills sets are highly complementary, and we see many exciting opportunities ahead that our teams can explore together.”

Here is an overview of each company, via the press release:

Phoenix Labs

Phoenix Labs was founded in Vancouver in 2014 by veteran game executives with a track record of working on some of the world’s best-known game franchises. It now has a team of more than 100 developers with decades of experience in building world-class AAA games across its offices in Vancouver, Canada, San Francisco, and Seattle, Washington. The studio launched its debut title Dauntless, a cross-platform co-op action RPG, in 2019.

Garena

Headquartered in Singapore, Garena is a global leading games developer and publisher. It had more than 320 million quarterly active users in the third quarter of 2019. Its self-developed title, Free Fire, is one of the world’s most popular mobile games and was the most downloaded mobile game globally in 2019 according to App Annie. Garena was one of Phoenix Labs’ earliest investors and has supported the growth of the company and the development of Dauntless over the last several years.