Starbreeze cedes majority control of StarVR to Acer

Starbreeze has ceded majority control of StarVR to Acer, which was once its equal partner in the location-based virtual reality platform.

When the joint venture was first announced in May 2016, the plan was for Acer and Starbreeze to invest an equal share of $25 million over time. Until today, the two companies had invested a combined $10 million, but the remainder will all come from Acer.

Acer will now invest a further $5 million, and in doing so increase its share of StarVR to 66.7 per cent. Starbreeze will no longer have to honour the $7.5 million it agreed to invest last year, and its share of the business will decrease to 33.3 per cent. Future financing for StarVR will also be handled by Acer.

"Starbreeze remains fully dedicated to the field of VR, where we see great potential in the development of location-based VR that gives users access to premium VR experiences," said CEO Bo Andersson Klint in a statement. "We have pushed design and technical innovation to fruition in our StarVR collaboration with Acer.

"Starbreeze will continue to push innovation in the headset and focus on its core business - content. Our games and related premium VR experiences will primarily use the StarVR headset for location-based VR centers and we are eager to continue contributing to the success of StarVR."

VR is just one of several fields in which Starbreeze has invested over the last few years, including toys-to-life, asset outsourcing and a growing publishing business. The company's most recent financial report showed the weight of those costs, and its continuing reliance on two games, Payday 2 and Dead by Daylight, for the vast majority of its revenue.

Balance was supposed to be restored by the release of new games, but Lion Game Lion's The Raid: World War II, which Starbreeze published this month, received negative to middling appraisals from the critics.