This misses the point some of us are making. I'm totally fine with everything you say here. I understand how business works, and am completely fine with companies bringing in investors. In fact, that's exactly how they ought to operate.
The issue here is not that some outside investor owns 30% of Larian. The issue here is that investor is Tencent. It is specifically Tencent with whom I have a grave problem.
I'm not the biggest fan of Tencent or the Chinese Government myself, but for me, as long as that controlling stake stays at 30% and Swen remains at 51%+, it really is at the end of the day just a source of funding. This isn't a Riot Games situation where Tencent actually owns 100% and thus can dictate and impact business decisions.
If you want to look at who owns what and judge base on where funding is coming from, that can be an endless rabbit hole.
If it makes you feel any better, the largest shareholder of Tencent is actually Nasper, a Dutch/South African company at 31% (no one has a larger share). The original founders around 8.4 and 3.5% respectively. Because the company is based in China and given their system there, the Chinese government obviously can exert a lot of control over how the company operates (i.e. they recently tanked Tencent's stock due to that whole thing about limiting gaming hours). That's where the most troubling sway comes from IMO.
The truth is, a tiny company like Larian is a rounding error for a company like Tencent. The stake is probably more likely Tencent not wanting to hold onto too much cash and wanting to put into proper diversified securities with decent ROI instead. Almost all company try not to hoard too much cash because you are losing tons of money letting it sit there when it could have been invested.
