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Tencent’s moves into the Western games market continues as the Chinese giant has invested in Liverpool-based developer Milky Tea Studios.

Milky Tea recently announced a third new IP called HyperBrawl Tournament which is due to come to Steam and Nintendo Switch in 2018. The studio has previously released a mobile game called Roller Rally and a Steam and Console game called Coffin Dodgers. This is in addition to their work in animation and illustration.

The investment from Tencent will help the studio grow with an expansion of its team and also to help develop further new IPs in future. There has been no announcement as to the amount invested or if there are any caveats to the investment, such as developing titles for the Chinese market.

“This partnership marks a turning-point in Milky Tea’s history," said Milky Tea founder and MD, Jonathan Holmes. "The scale of it really hasn’t hit home just yet, but we are all really proud to be part of the Tencent family and we couldn’t ask for better partners.

"Everyone at Tencent has gone above and beyond our expectations to make this happen and from a personal point of view, it’s a dream come true. It allows us as a team to focus on making the kind of high quality games that we’ve always dreamed of making. My ambition is to turn Milky Tea into a mini MTV meets Pixar of the Video Gaming World. The hard work starts now, as we take the studio onto the next level – our best work is definitely yet to come. With Tencent supporting us, it’s like the studio just got some rocket fuel!”