Gears of War 4 multiplayer studio bought by Chinese chicken meat supplier

Splash Damage, the studio behind Brink and a contributor to Gears of War 4's multiplayer mode, has been purchased by Leyou, a Chinese supplier of chicken meat (and presumably — barring some heavy, poultry-centric retraining of the Splash Damage staff — video games). A price is not disclosed in the announcement of the deal, which revealed only that money changing hands would be more than $35 million and less than $150 million.

It's not the first such purchase for Leyou, which picked up Warframe developer Digital Extremes earlier this year, after purchasing a portion of the Canadian studio in 2015. Leyou blames the pivot on sluggish profits in its poultry business. In fact, the release states that in 2015, when it owned only a portion of Digital Extremes, "approximately 80 percent of the revenue [of Leyou] was generated from the Poultry Business, approximately 70 percent of the gross profit ... was generated from the Video Gaming Business."

The deal also includes the purchase of Fireteam, which works on online backends for games, and Warchest, a digital-only game publisher.

We don't yet know what Splash Damage's first project will be after being bought by the chicken supplier/video game company, but we'd like to suggest a property that's calling out for a reboot.