Tencent have acquired Visual Arts, a prominent visual novel distributor and the parent company of development studio Key. Visual Arts’ extensive list of works include CLANNAD, AIR, and Kanon.
News of the acquisition broke in a new blog post by Visual Arts outlining the company’s future going forward. Visual Arts CEO Takahiro Baba will step down, and Genki Tenkumo (Okano Tohya) will become the new CEO. Baba understands that stepping down like this may seem like a troubling sign for the company, but the former CEO notes this is not the case. Although Baba is in good health, he notes that he’s 63 years old and would like to retire since “anything can happen” at his age. The Baba family owns 100% of the Visual Arts stock and will continue to operate as it wants after the acquisition by Tencent.
Future of Visual Arts Under Tencent
Visual Arts is now a child company for Tencent, but the company was previously considering other partner companies for a potential sale. Specific companies were not named by Visual Arts, however. According to Visual Arts, Tencent was the leading company out of all other candidates for the sale. The company reiterates that “Visual Arts will remain Visual Arts,” and the staff will be able to continuing doing the things they want.
Further into the blog post, Visual Arts states that visual novels will remain a focal point of the studio. 33 years have passed since the founding on Visual Arts, and the visual novel genre has grown enough to garner an audience of players worldwide. Baba states that Visual Arts has a lot of plans that will be overseen by Tenkumo, including several new projects. Personally, Baba would like to see a new visual novel, new anime, and a new mobile game announced.
Lastly, the full blog post may be read here.
