The Chinese multimedia giant has already been heavily invested in video games for more than a decade. But its approach so far has been to fully acquire only a handful of studios, while investing in minority stakes in huge video game players.
This is for example what happened with Ubisoft, of which 11% of the shares belong to Tencent, or with FromSoftware which saw 16.25% of its capital being bought by the Chinese company. These are just the latest minor acquisitions by Tencent, which also owns 40% of the shares of Epic Games, but also smaller shares of Activision Blizzard King, Marvelous Interactive or PlatinumGames.
Now, Tencent wants to make a new rule of what was only an exception, namely taking full control of a company’s capital. Studios such as Funcom, Riot Games, Sumo Digital, Turtle Rock, Digital Extremes and Splash Damage are already 100% owned by Tencent, while others like Grinding Gear Games have seen Tencent take majority but not full shares. It is this model that the Chinese giant now intends to apply, particularly in Europe, according to Reuters.
One more step in the great movement of concentration of video game companies in the hands of a few major players.