Tencent therefore achieved a video game turnover of 25 billion euros (174 billion yuan) in 2021, again surpassing its performance in 2020 (21.6 billion euros). A colossal result never equaled by anyone in the history of the industry, whose other biggest players for the year 2021 are PlayStation (22.6 billion euros), Xbox (14.8 billion euros) and Nintendo (13.9 billion euros). Tencent Games is also far ahead of NetEase Games, its closest Chinese competitor (12.3 billion euros).
Note that Tencent does not communicate its profits from video games in particular, but the group as a whole made a profit of more than 32 billion euros last year. A year described as “difficult” by the management of the group, believe it or not. Tencent notably owns the WeChat and QQ applications which allow it to reign over more than a billion users in China, between messaging, payment system and social network.
Coming back to video games, revenues from the international market (everywhere except China) explain Tencent’s strong growth in 2021. In this register, League of Legends, PUBG Mobile, Pokémon Unite, Valorant and Clash Royale are cited as essential contributors, even if it would take a whole day to summarize all the studios that passed under the Tencent flag in 2021 alone. Revenue outside China now represents 26% of Tencent’s revenue, whose goal will now be to increase this percentage each year to depend less on the local market.
In China, precisely, income from games is stable, which is a lesser evil when you consider the number of spokes that the Chinese government places in the wheels of the video game industry, between the drastically reduced playing time for miners and the interruption of exit permissions for new apps that have been waiting for the green light for months. As a result, spending by underage players now represents only 1.5% of total revenue from Tencent games in China. On site, Honor of Kings is still the historical boss but Tencent also cites League of Legends: Wild Rift and the recent Fight of The Golden Spatula, a local re-reading of Teamfight Tactics.
“Among international mobile games, we have developed 5 of the top 10 titles measured by number of daily active users. The League of Legends anime series Arcane topped Netflix’s English-language TV series chart in the week following its release. The League of Legends World Championship cemented its leadership as the most popular esports tournament in the world, attracting a record number of approximately 74 million concurrent viewers for its finals. Clash Royale has released one of the biggest updates in its history, increasing the number of daily active users and gross revenue. We launched our global game publishing brand, Level Infinite, to help our studios and partners bring games to international gamers“, summarizes Tencent.
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