Tencent Future Acquisitions and Divestitures
- Thread starter Shortbread
- Start date
Maybe Epic Games or Take-Two Interactive.
it wasnt tencent that invested into bungie, it was netease thankfully.
The current rumour apparently is they are buying zynga btw
They don't already own them?
nope
Tencent is acquiring a majority stake in Klei Entertainment. The developers of Don’t Starve.
Just to note. This isn’t related to the money Tencent was confirmed to be raising yesterday.
https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/126355-studio-announcement/
Just to note. This isn’t related to the money Tencent was confirmed to be raising yesterday.
https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/126355-studio-announcement/
Is there any legitimate reason why some believe Tencent is bad for gaming? I haven't heard of any stories dealing with heavy-handed management practices or game studio closings. Honestly, their business practices (acquiring developers) are no different than EA, Activision, Microsoft, Sony, and so-on.
Ultimately, they're under strict control of the Chinese government who can direct the company to do whatever they want. The same cannot be said for companies owned in US, UK or even Japan.
Are there any documented cases/issues of this happening across Tencent acquired gaming companies?
Rurouni
Veteran
Probably not since they wouldn't let it happen in the first place. Tencent is pretty much under CCP influence. If China can influence games that is not made in China, what are the chances games coming from Tencent owned companies/devs dare to do something that make CCP uncomfortable.
the problem I have with it is that sheer scale of the organisation that they have. They are a pure play gaming company with a market cap of 850B USD, they own/have stakes in a large portion of the gaming market. And because of all this control over the market that they have they can do a lot of damage.
When all this consolidation in the gaming industry calms down a bit I am certain that tencent will release their own store front on PC, which to be clear I dont have an inherent problem with, but the issue I have with it is that they are building up their first party to such a gargantuan size while no one is paying attention to them from an anti-trust standpoint, because they arent doing anything with the acquisitions they have made so far, yet. Their plan is, imo, to build up their game offering to the point that you cant choose to not use their software is you participate in gaming in any appreciable way.
People started talking about anti-trust issues when microsoft acquired bethesda, tencent is easily several orders of magnitude larger than this.
Take two's market cap is around $30B That's a lot of money to spend. Also i would hate if they bought it since Civ is my fav franchise and my wife and I dump hundreds of hours into each release.
Ea is also about $50B , I don't think this is a great deal as a lot of value is tied up into sports franchises on the EA side and at any time those sports leagues can decided that exclusive licensing is against their interest like MLB did. Of course you get a metric ton of IP including some of my favorite like Ultima , Wing Commander and command and conquer.
I think it will be smaller companies around the 5-10B mark . I think once you go after a EA or Take two the market will start to react and the speculation will get built into the price making a $30B Take Two suddenly becomes 40 or 50B and EA could also become a 70B purchase.
Johnny Awesome
Veteran
Yeah. EA is a terrible 1st party purchase.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Nothing WRT to Tencent, however, the Chinese government has managed to shut down games made in other countries that it thought were critical of the Chinese government or Xi Jinping.
In 2019, Devotion, a game made by a Taiwanese developer was removed from Steam because it contained an easter egg that said "Xi Xinping Winnie-the-Pooh moron." While Steam wouldn't go into details about the removal and the developer claims to have removed it at their own behest, it's widely understood that the title was removed under pressure from the Chinese government. Also, yay to Harvard for thumbing its nose at China and having it added to their library in order to preserve it for posterity (Harvard Library adds Devotion, the game removed from Steam for insulting Xi Jinping | South China Morning Post (scmp.com) ).
Even Blizzard has caved to pressure from the Chinese government at certain points in order to maintain a presence in that country.
This combined with increasing control and censorship over movies and movie content in China means that any Chinese publisher is highly unlikely to approve the development of any title which might include anything:
- That may be considered critical of China or its government.
- That may be construed as painting Xi Jinping in an unfavorable light.
- That does not adhere to values that the Chinese government is promoting at any given time.
- This one is especially tricky as something that was acceptable at the time of the start of development may be deemed unacceptable at the time of a games launch.
- Anything else that the Chinese government does not like.
That said, up until now Tencent has mostly allowed the studios it acquires to remain mostly independent. But those studios also know that will only continue if they don't make anything that the Chinese government would object to.
Regards,
SB
Tencent has a acquired a minor stake in Dontnod Entertainment (Life is Strange, Vampyr, Twin Mirror) for 30 million euro. The funds raised will go towards new self published IP on PC, Console and Mobile.
https://www.actusnews.com/en/DONTNO...aneous-launch-of-approximately-eur-40-million
The two companies also signed a business cooperation agreement which seems to revolve around mobile games and the China games market, with Tencent helping Dontnod enter this market.
https://www.actusnews.com/en/DONTNO...aneous-launch-of-approximately-eur-40-million
The two companies also signed a business cooperation agreement which seems to revolve around mobile games and the China games market, with Tencent helping Dontnod enter this market.
Tkumpathenurpahl
Veteran
I wondered why every conversation in Vampyr had an option to reiterate the borders of the South China Sea.
