On July 27, 2018, King & Wood Mallesons advised Improbable Worlds Limited (“Improbable”), a well-known game development platform company in the U.K., on its successful strategic partnership with the Chinese game giant enterprise, NetEase. As part of this strategic partnership, Improbable reached a notable milestone following the financing of US$50 million from NetEase, with its valuation now reaching US$ 2 billion.

Headquartered in London, Improbable is a game development platform company whose central business function is to provide strong technical support to game makers through the SpatialOS platform, and to solve previously intractable problems throughout game development processes. It enables game makers to create powerful virtual worlds and uses its advanced technical services to provide richer, more innovative game development opportunities for the gaming industry. Through this strategic partnership, NetEase will also use SpatialOS technology to develop and publish games, with its first game developed on SpatialOS to be released in the near future.

Prior to NetEase's strategic investment, Improbable successively received investments of $20 million and $30 million in 2015. In May 2017, Improbable raised $502 million in a funding round led by SoftBank with its valuation reaching close to $1 billion at that time.

This project is a typical strategic partnership. As counsel to Improbable, King & Wood Mallesons has assisted Improbable in negotiating with NetEase and played a key role in facilitating and ensuring their partnership, which will accelerate the development of Improbable as a global Internet technology company. The project was led by partner Rocky Lee and received generous support and assistance from James Zeng, a partner in King & Wood Mallesons’ Guangzhou Office.