A genuinely impressive list. They clearly know the valuable and successful properties to throw money at. I wonder why other USA tech players passed on those kinds of investments, because they certainly had the chance, and would ostensibly have been preferable given equivalent terms.
There's clearly a bigger play here that other large players in entertainment aren't valuing the same way. What is it?
As a founder of one of the companies on that list, I can at least say why we went with Tencent.
All the western tech companies all had shitty alterior motives for wanting to buy us.
Amazon wants to use you to get more prime subscribers. Microsoft wants you to develop games as exclusives for their platforms. Etc etc.
You talk to other companies western tech buys and its stories about how they come in and meddle.
Only Tencent wants to buy you so that you can keep doing the thing you are doing without screwing around with your company. They have a very good reputation for this and it’s deserved.
The Allen Brack letter wasn't that long ago, have we already forgotten our prizings? I wonder how that fiasco would have gone down if it was a 10% stake, instead of 5%. It would be pretty hard to top getting an American CEO to claim Chinese copy as his own in a publicity crisis management letter... addressing a Chinese censorship publicity crisis.
To be clear for people that don't know: in October 2019 a Hearthstone (Blizzard game) player protested for Hong Kong while in a tournament stream, by putting on a mask (ironic right?) and shouting "Liberate Hong Kong".
Blizzard proceeded to ban the player, take away his prizemoney and also fire the live stream casters.
Following community criticism, they gave back the prizemoney to the player and reduced his ban to 6 months. Also, they said "the specific views expressed by blitzchung were NOT a factor in the decision we made". But in the official Blizzard Weibo account, they had mentioned they applied the ban to "protect China's national dignity".
A phrase made meaningless by its universal applicability. Blizzard management was upset about their inability to control everyone associated with them? Play stupid games...
Don't appreciate someone pointing out the fact that "Play stupid games" is mouth noise? Play stupid games...
That is good to know, Chinese games have a bad rap for being microtransaction heavy/P2W and I had assumed that Tencent would push the games under its wing to follow the same direction.
The upside of this (and their very succesful WeChat payment platform) is that Tencent is far less dependent on advertising revenue and all the ad-related ills than Facebook.
Huh, that's a lot. With what happened with Jack Ma, I am not sure how comfortable outside companies are with holding that much stake in a company in PRC.
News reports seemed to indicate even Tencent was under scanner along with Alibaba.
They were early investor. Different companies with different focus has different exposure risk. Tencent is golden goose as long as it stays in it's lane and read the tea leaves. They've been very competent at it so far.
Domestic/geopolitics affect companies everywhere. Investors of Qualcomm (Edit: _can't_) be happy after US implemented entity list, and that affects third parties as well like TSMC and ASML. The latter got off light because semis are in such demand, but a bunch of Euro/Japan/Korean tech companies in Huawei supply chain lost out big.
Well ... Jack Ma was epitome of play stupid games, win stupid prizes. He knows from inside out how the CCP system works and how to push criticism about the system (subtly, privately).
It is not as if he doesn't have Xi or any other high level party official on quickdial.
Well that's obviously not reality, because Ant is in the process of being essentially nationalized or broken up to a degree because of Jack Ma's public criticism of the system. Having someone on quickdial doesn't mean having them under your control or in your pocket.
He didn't just criticize the Chinese system. He criticized the Chinese system regulating themselves so that they could conform to the Basel V standards (which all major Western banks and global banks follow). Ant wanted to fight as a bank, while not calling themselves one. Ma's speech was an attack not only on China but on the Western regulated banking sector. He wants a return to the pre 08 wild west that the Western system was.
It owns neither... but sure, politics only happen in china... Amazon never did anything political ever... except for that Wikileaks thing... and the Parler thing... but US gov definitely doesn’t own them
They didn’t include a lot of things like JD, Pinduoduo and dozens more investments. It seemed focused on gaming investments.
SoftBank is the main backer of ByteDance as a big company. Not Tencent. ByteDance has a chance of being a proper third tech giant with Baidu having peaked long ago.
They don't need to add restrictions (or benefits) on company they bought, they just need to keep as many market as they can (thanks to no restrictive market law)
When the time come, they will be able to destroy our economy, or drive it.
This list just show tencent investment, but if you get all China companies that invest in game companies, it much most scariest
This is like a nuclear bomb, how they can invest that much without any benefits (look in Africa), this money is considered as military investment that's why
If you buy a rocket it's not an investment, it's to take a position, if it explode or not it's not important
May be the time will never come but like nuclear bomb, it's a strategic position and nothing else
I’m a long time fan of Don’t Starve Together and this news is just disappointing. What frustrates me most, though, is that China is able to operate here in the US independently whereas it’s much more likely it won’t be reciprocated.
Chinese app stores take a 50% cut on every sales and transactions.
To publish in China you need to get a deal with a local publisher/company which takes another 70% cut of the remaining 50% (before taxes). Plus the long and heavy administrative paperwork to get a game approved by the authorities.
Meanwhile chinese game companies can sell their games on western and asian markets without any restriction whatsoever.
There is no reciprocity with China on the game market.
> Plus the long and heavy administrative paperwork to get a game approved by the authorities.
True. I am a game developer in China. I can't afford those paperwork, both in terms of money and energy. I intend to publish my game in Western countries.
> There is no reciprocity with China on the game market.
True. Besides, china also has cheap labour in gaming industry, where employees are expected to work many hours.
Thst is a very good question, and as others have said, the answer is yes.
It's also a question you should ask whenever someone demands "reciprocity" by banning Chinese company X from Western markets because Western company Y is banned from China. If you ask "if Y were a Chinese company, would they be banned, too?" the answer is usually yes.
Google Search and Facebook aren't banned because of where they're from, but because of what they do, i.e. offering access to information the Chinese government wants censored. A Chinese company offering access to censored information would be shut down long before they got big enough to make international news.
There's no need for "reciprocity" by putting more severe restrictions on Chinese companies. Applying the same rules to everyone would be enough. (Requiring all companies listed on US stock exchanges to be audited by the SEC is an example of a step in that direction.)
It baffles me sometimes that while gaming industry is booming, create massive opportunities and tax revenue, and it is no way threatening the communist ideology, the government still treats it like a step child, shitting on it whenever it can.
- Old Parents hate game. And old parents usually control the policy making and media.
- Rent Seeking. As many policies in China, no clear rule in terms of game regulation. You want to pass it? Money helps. Those who make such rules don't care about taxes loses. Different department, different incentives.
To be fair, gaming as a consumer is not an inherently productive activity. The production of games, sure, but the tax of the creation is heavily distributed across the consuming population.
If what you care about is to have your population be as productive as possible, you want to produce just enough of these entertainment avenues domestically as would be sustainable and not leading to large scale distraction, while still mainly exporting the product that has no such restraints.
I think that's actually the challenge at hand for China, and it's not unique to the country. Korea, Japan, and many others face the same issues while having different tools to deal with the phenomenon.
I have to say, game is no longer games any more. For console and PC games, it may stay the same as before, (although the freemium is popular as well). Many mobile games, and casual games is about take as much as your time and money as possible through data science. It is pure evil.
I bought a switch for my son, but I try to keep him away from mobile games, especially those advertise in apps.
Because the CCP does have a moral obligation to nurture the youth, you can label the motive to whatever you want, but addiction to video games are obviously bad for health and wasting a lot of time such that the school work would be affected.
Not mentioning the gaming ideology is naturally free and liberalism oriented. There were patriotic games commissioned by government, and have been very awkward. Totalitarian nation's government generally tolerate very little about ideologically different median or mass influence tools.
Most governments in the world, including most western ones, have a long history of regulations and legal restrictions on gambling. Maybe the Chinese are ahead of the curve in recognizing the similarities in the video game industry.
Is steam available in China? If not, what platforms do people use? Do you really only get about 15% of the sale price before taxes? I’m making a game of my own and am just curious for the future
Steam is available in China, but it's a separate "instance" ran independently of worldwide Steam with a curated list of AAA games, so without the abundance of content and freedom to publish for everyone.
Generally if you want to publish in China I'd say either "don't" and just release a Chinese localization in global stores, if you think that you will have a target audience in China, or find a huge publisher that will help you out.
> Steam is available in China, but it's a separate "instance"
Not yet. Despite various sources saying it is "near", the separate "instance" has not been up for now.
The main Steam store works in China for the past few years, and it's what everyone uses. Yes, I mean I can buy a copy of Devotion on Steam with Alipay (or Wechat Pay) + RMB, download and play it without messing with anything. I have no idea why it hasn't been banned though.
The Steam Community pages did get GFW-ed, just as every other sites hosting UGC without censorship[1].
[1]: If it is not, it's usually just a "Five demands not one less" away from being banned. Even scratch.mit.edu.
Could you help shedding light on how this myth spreads? Like, where did you read about this myth? I have seen it mentioned on HN/Reddit multiple times and can't find the source.
After they bought League of Legends, they "updated" several dozen paid skins, some worth significant money apparently without communicating to Riot Games (the company directly in control of LoL, or rather the one who once was) or the player base. The quality of the update was mediocre to laughable.
Reversion/Fixing took month and there was never any apology IIRC.
Also, putting money into an indie game dev vs. putting money into a CRP-controled conglomerate which is silently buying more and more media may or may not be a morally different endeavor for someone.
Perhaps, but is that a problem? Isn't it a good thing when interests are aligned? Tesla looked at the situation and they are fine with it, otherwise they wouldn't be there.
Allowing majority foreign ownershipnis a process that has been ongoing for years. Every year, more parts of the Chinese economy open up.
Is this a problem? Let me introduce you to the LANDWIND, the chinese copy of Range rover vehicles. Tesla is taking a huge risk, lots and lots and lots of unknowns, for the sake of tapping into China more effectively. https://www.theweek.co.uk/business/61500/landwind-x7-14000-r...
its 'cause the trade war that force China to allowed this. if there is no trade war. do you think China will allowed what have been working for them for the past 40+ years?
China has in fact not been employing the same strategy for 40 years. That would be foolish. Different developmental stages require different strategies. As China's economy matures, the strategy is increasingly changing to that of opening up.
The move to open up their markets, and to allow majority-foreign ownership, began way before the trade war. It was already ongoing in 2014: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-25647808
China signed a major investment deal with the EU last month. China made major concessions. Unlike Trump, who with his "tough on China" tactics only managed to antagonize China and didn't get a proper trade deal, the EU got the sort of concessions that Trump was after, by being properly diplomatic.
This is the problem with the US attitude of treating China as an enemy. I also have no idea where all the "engaging with China is a failed strategy" and crowd comes from: the EU literally showed you that engagement works better than antagonization and coercion! Facts literally show you that China was already opening up before Trump!
Maybe you'd like to read more about Operation PBSuccess - they sure didn't call it that because it failed. [1] The US (specifically the CIA) replaced a democratically elected "socialist" in Guatemala with a right-wing authoritarian military dictator at the request of what is now the Chiquita fruit company. This of course kick-started a civil war that lasted 36 years.
On the plus side, it gave us "Why the Kremlin Hates Bananas" [2]
Interesting it lists right wing and left wing focus. Sounds like the US is bias towards the middle. Not sure how to groc that. Most likely it is what is important to the nation at the time would be a better qualification. History repeats itself. Thank you for sharing the links all.
The US bias when, uh, intervening in foreign politics is towards whatever's best of the US. Usually, more specifically, US corporate interests. Little care is paid to who ends up in charge so long as they're pro-"Business" and pro-America.
> In December 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated that the United States did not plan a military intervention in Venezuela, saying that "we have said that all options are on the table", but that "we have learned from history that the risks from using military force are significant".
There has been zero proven connection between that operation with any US gov office nor even Guaidó himself. It was 100% amateur hour and initiated by a con man’s security company.
As a Venezuelan and victim of Maduro's constant anti imperialist propaganda I strongly believe the operation gedeon is just a fake. If the US would like to remove Maduro from power I don't think they would send 30 poorly trained, barely equipped men, from which the grand majority didn't even have military experience to disembark in one of the most popular coasts of Venezuela just a few kilometers from a navy base.
Members of Congress have literally referred to it as a coup on Twitter, it’s not some big secret or something you can choose not to believe in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24052507
Do you denounce the grandparent's comment about international economic rules as whataboutism too? The topic is Tencent's acquisition, not international economic rules.
so then you must take China as a better steward of the global order? you believe China should be able to bully the US, like the US has 'bullied' others? you believe they are on the side of justice?
Can't say I'm particularly excited about Tencent snatching up yet another game studio, and they (Klei) were expecting backlash for sure which is why they prefaced with how they're maintaining autonomy when it comes to creative decisions and to be fair, Tencent has been fairly respectful in that regard with other studios... but one does not make an acquisition just to have it bleed money so I expect the level of screw-tightening to vary according to any future games' successes.
If they're successful in spite, and not because of their new overlords, I have little reason to believe things would change much- why kill the golden goose, after all? But if things don't go as wanted...
Tecent has been actually allowing independency for most of previously acquired studios. Seems a good deal for the team.
Also it's well known that the Chinese creative market is a bit brain-fucked, in the sense the cut-throat competition drives a lot of studios focusing on trial-and-true designs, results into significant duplication of ideas and implementations. They kind of require talents from a different environment to produce something that is novel to Chinese market.
This is true, I work for Sharkmob. There’s significantly less interference here (a wholly owned company) than there was at Ubisoft (a 5% owned company - whom I also used to work for)
I think it's just Tencent that are too money oriented, instead of Chinese gamedev environment as a whole that fucked up.
To be fair, a lot of famous Chinese game are gacha/microtransaction since China is mobile first environment. Console gaming only gained traction recently.
This is anecdotal but the gacha in Genshin Impact is quite reasonable and you can get really excellent characters and builds without paying a penny if you do it smart. You get enough free premium currency to get a 100% chance of getting at least one top-tier character (on average you'll get two or three) (and obviously many excellent but not top-tier ones besides) as long as you spend it carefully, and every month or two there's a free really good character too.
It's definitely much more PC-oriented than mobile oriented, though.
For a mainly single player game the monetization is not bad.
That said it still isn't optimal, and the issue of power-creep is not even taken into account yet
Gacha in Genshin is nasty unless you are not greedy and contend playing F2P or limited 5* characters. Anyway the correct thing mihoyo done with Genshin is that in addition to make a very good game (AAA tier for free), their community is also excellent and releasing MMD models for free allows fans keep making meme out it.
I am fully F2P and have Keqing, Mona, Jean, Albedo, Fischl, Barbara, Xiangling, Razor, Xingqui, Beidou, Xinyan, and Noelle.
I honestly don't think I'm missing much. I could use a Cryo or Pyro 5*, but it's perfectly fine.
I did get somewhat lucky, but I was able to do ~130 free gacha rolls and have enough gems left for around 20 more, so it's not outside of expectations.
I think it is fine. You can always lust after more characters but really, if you spend your primogems wisely, there is no real need beyond what you can get for free.
I also appreciate the resin system that removes the incentive to spend too much time on the game. It limits me to 45 minutes a day which undoubtedly costs MiHoYo a lot but is appreciated.
If you run the numbers, every day you can as a F2P player get enough for a 1.6-2.2% probability at a 5* character, so around 40-60% at a 5* every month. For this you have to be patient and game the pity system, though.
> unless you are not greedy and contend playing F2P or limited 5* characters
That honestly sounds reasonable to me. I don't see that deal as nasty. There's so much content, I didn't miss the extra characters at all. I actually almost completely missed the idea that there are more characters, so when I got the free extra one, I just though "oh, that's cool".
It doesn't limit your gameplay unless you really want to grind and complete 100% of Genshin. (and at that point you're sinking many hours a day - maybe it's worth paying for?) It's emphatically not "pay to win".
I was born and raised in mainland until leaving for US at 24 in 2008.
Never saw much original games from Chinese studios. A lot of games are purely sexuality saturated cheap games, on both web and mobile. Pay to win is very popular.
Chinese indie games got more interesting around 蜡烛人 Candleman in 2017. Personally I didn't enjoy that game, a bit too much trial and error, but it is a "real" platform game.
I have been trying various other ones to try find something really creative and unique, and the best one I have found is called Another Adventure from ThankCreate Studio. This one is neat, a bit of a commentary on high tech/programmer/996 lifestyle.
Another game I liked was 雨纪 Flood of Light. It is a fairly simple puzzle game, very low stress and easy, with a bit of sad anime style story. There was a very relaxing fish sim too called 鲤 Koi.
I am a bit out of the loop, I think it's hard to keep up with all the latest indie games if you are not following local media, but it definitely feels like last 3-4 years there is a small and growing scene. Some games even translated in English and got some press in western media too, like Tales of the Neon Sea.
Of course, the vast majority of games are still pay to win, anime style clickers, not really my thing at all.
I think this take is correct. Path of Exile players also made a lot of noise in 2018 but the game developers seem to be able t do their thing. Fortnite and League are still obviously hugely successful as well.
An interesting development since the Path of Exile acquisition is a Chinese client that has a bunch of features players everywhere else in the world have been asking for since the game's inception (notably macro support to prevent RSI).
> Also it's well known that the Chinese creative market is a bit brain-fucked ... lot of studios focusing on trial-and-true designs
IMO Don't Starve is a really enjoyable, very original game. Not sure about Klei's other titles, but maybe having an acquisition that's outside of the routine Chinese game studio is what they're after? Especially if the native teams are as homogeneous as you say.
Interesting observations about the Chinese economy right now.
The lax IP protections have allowed for incredible innovation in hardware and software. Everybody copies each other shamelessly, driving relentless competition.
But when it comes to creative properties its practically bankrupt. A lot of market movers are just copying each other and lack the capability to make anything transformative.
Their gaming market seems flooded with hundreds of mobile companies with near identical products.
It doesn't surprise me that Chinese investment firms are chomping at the bit to acquire more creative properties from other countries.
They really dont have to do much other than localize the acquired properties and release them to a market starved for good games.
Its a smart investment, in my eyes.
It's a double-edged sword. There are Chinese businessmen who chose not to do business in China, restricting themselves to foreign markets, because they are worried about IP theft in China.
But the situation is slowly improving. IP protection laws, as well as general rule of law, are slowly improving. Whereas 10 years ago IP protection wasn't much of a priority for the central government, it is now a prioritity.
Full ownership of Norwegian publisher Funcom.
Full ownership of Swedish developer Sharkmob
80% ownership in the New Zealand company Grinding Gear Games
Approximately 84% ownership in Finnish mobile game developer Supercell
40% ownership of American developers Epic Games
20% ownership of Japanese publisher and developer Marvelous which owns G-Mode and the majority of Data East's intellectual properties
17.66% ownership of South Korean mobile developer Netmarble.
Approximately 15% ownership of American mobile game developer Glu Mobile
13.54% ownership of South Korean company Kakao, the parent company of South Korean publisher Kakao Games.
9% ownership in UK developer Frontier Developments
5% ownership of American holding company Activision Blizzard, the parent company of Activision, Blizzard and King
5% ownership of Swedish publisher Paradox Interactive
5% ownership in France's Ubisoft
1.5% ownership of South Korean company Bluehole
Majority ownership in Switzerland-based mobile game developer Miniclip
Capital Investment in Japanese developer PlatinumGames
Capital Investment in Reddit
Minority share in German developer Yager Development
Minority ownership of French mobile game developer Voodoo
Major share in Sweden's 10 Chambers Collective
Majority ownership of Canadian Klei Entertainment.