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Leyou Technologies Holdings Limited (t=樂遊科技控股有限公司; formerly Sumpo Food Holdings Limited) is a Chinese video game holding company based at Lippo Centre, Admiralty, Hong Kong. Founded in 2010, the company originally dealt with poultry through its subsidiary Fujian Sumpo, which had been founded in 1998. After floating on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January 2011, poultry-based income started to fall in 2013. It agreed to buy a majority stake in the video game developer Digital Extremes in October 2014, renamed itself Leyou in January 2015, and completed the acquisition later that year. It acquired Splash Damage in July 2016 before divesting its poultry business in August, majority-acquired Radiance Games, and invested in Certain Affinity in 2017, and established Athlon Games in 2018. In December 2020, Leyou was acquired by Tencent.
On 22 February 2010, Sumpo Food Holdings Limited was incorporated as a holding company in the Cayman Islands, acquiring the outstanding 90% of Fujian Sumpo. It completed an initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January 2011 at an issue price of per share. Lin Qinglin, serving as the company's chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), was the principal shareholder at 642 million shares, while his son, Lin Genghua, owned another 167 million. The combined 809 million shares were worth .
In January 2015, Sumpo Food Holdings changed its name to Leyou Technologies Holdings Limited. The acquisition of Digital Extreme's shares was completed in July 2015. By the end of that year, 70% of Leyou's gross profit was generated by its games business, despite 80% of all revenue being generated by its poultry business. The company acquired the remaining 39% in Digital Extremes in May 2016 for . In July 2016, via its UK subsidiary Radius Maxima, Leyou acquired three companies: The developer Splash Damage, online back-end technology company Fireteam, and online multiplayer publisher WarChest. All three were previously solely owned by their founder and CEO, Paul Wedgwood.
In July 2017, Leyou invested into Chinese developer Guangzhou Radiance Software Technology Co. Ltd. (Radiance Games) to acquire 51% of the company. It announced a investment in the American developer Certain Affinity in October, gaining a 20% stake. Leyou launched a publisher, Athlon Games, in California in May 2018. In September that year, Athlon Games and Middle-earth Enterprises agreed for the former to publish a multi-year, online free-to-play game based on The Lord of the Rings. Amazon (through its Amazon Game Studios unit) joined the project in July 2019, agreeing to co-develop and publish the game worldwide, while Leyou would publish it in China and Taiwan. Later that year, Athlon Games became the publisher of Samurai Shodown and a shareholder and publishing partner of LCG Entertainment, which acquired the assets of the defunct Telltale Games.
In 2019, Leyou was reported to be seeking a buyer. iDreamSky (which was 18.6%-owned by the conglomerate Tencent) and CVC Capital Partners offered to acquire Leyou, but the talks stalled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. iDreamSky was met with a competing offer from Zhejiang Century Huatong, which entered into a non-binding merger agreement with Leyou in May 2020. Bloomberg News reported that Sony and Tencent were also interested in bidding for Leyou as of July 2020. By August that year, Tencent appeared to be close to signing a deal to acquire Leyou. The Tencent deal was confirmed by Leyou's shareholders by 11 December 2020 and completed on 23 December 2020. Under the agreement, Tencent fully acquired the firm through its subsidiary Image Frame Investment. A dispute between Tencent and Amazon during contract negotiations for the planned The Lord of the Rings game led Amazon to cancel the game's development in April 2021. The acquisition further caused an exodus of Leyou employees, particularly at the Beijing and Shanghai offices. Among them, Xu left in April 2021.
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