Perfect Online Holding, a wholly owned subsidiary of Perfect World Company, and Sumpo Food Holdings Limited have made a bid for Canadian development studio Digital Extremes - a 20 year veteran who rose to fame working on the Unreal franchise and more recently have delivered The Darkness II, Star Trek and Warframe.
The deal was reached at the end of last month, but is still pending approvals which is why Perfect World and Digital Extremes haven't made any formal announcements (the only formal announcement is a press release informing the market about the deal from Sumpo Food Holdings).
Warframe's creative director Steve Sinclair wrote the following on the official forum:
"You may have read something about the business development side of Digital Extremes, and it may have you concerned. For legal reasons, we can't disclose specifics, but if you know the history of Warframe you'd know that we are intent on having Warframe's design remain in the hands of Digital Extremes. Yes, opportunities will arise for us but the game itself is and will remain a labor of love for us."
Perfect World have been making a lot of moves in North America recently acquiring Cryptic Studios, setting up Cryptic North, publishing Blacklight: Retribution and Neverwinter.