Techland

Techland is a Polish video game developer and publisher founded in 1991 by Pawe? Marchewka, headquartered in Wroc?aw with an additional office in Warsaw. The studio is best known for the Dead Island and Dying Light franchises, open-world action games built around parkour mechanics, melee combat, and survival systems. In July 2023, Tencent announced it would acquire a 67 percent majority stake in Techland for a reported $1.6 billion, while Marchewka remained CEO and the studio retained full ownership of its intellectual property and creative independence.

History and Early Games

Marchewka founded Techland in 1991 after spending his final years of high school distributing video games across Poland with friends. The company initially focused on translating and publishing foreign software for the Polish market before producing its first in-house game, Prawo Krwi, in 1995. Techland released the sci-fi shooter Chrome in 2003 and its prequel Chrome: SpecForce in 2005, alongside the Call of Juarez Western FPS series beginning in 2006 and rally racing titles including Xpand Rally. The studio opened a Vancouver branch called Digital Scapes Studios in 2013, which it later sold to fellow Polish developer CD Projekt in 2021, with the team renamed CD Projekt Red Vancouver.

Dead Island

Dead Island released in 2011, an open-world survival horror game set on a zombie-infested tropical resort, preceded by a viral trailer that generated significant attention before launch. Dead Island: Riptide followed in 2013. Both games established Techland’s interest in open-world zombie survival design that would later define Dying Light. Techland later sold the Dead Island IP to Deep Silver, who published Dead Island 2 through Dambuster Studios in 2023.

Dying Light

Dying Light released in 2015 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, combining first-person survival horror with parkour-based traversal that let players run, climb, and leap across an infected city to escape and fight off the undead. The game has sold over 20 million copies and built one of the most dedicated communities in the survival genre. Dying Light 2: Stay Human, the sequel, released in February 2022 and sold five million copies in its launch month, expanding the city, the parkour systems, and adding branching narrative choices that affected the game world.

Tencent Partnership and the New Fantasy RPG

Techland announced in 2022 that it was developing an open-world fantasy action RPG, its first new IP in almost a decade, recruiting talent including former narrative leads from CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher series. In July 2023, Tencent announced its majority stake acquisition specifically to support the continued expansion of Dying Light and to ensure the new fantasy RPG met expectations. Marchewka has said the studio retains creative freedom and full IP ownership under the new ownership structure. As of mid-2026 the fantasy RPG remains in development with no official title or release date announced.