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Spotlight: The Biggest Player in the Videogame Industry – Meet Tencent

You may played hours of videogames and watched hours of tv shows and movies. You may know big names like Disney, Sony, Apple and Microsoft. But have you ever heard of Tencent?

Tencent is a Chinese conglomerate that has major holdings in tech, film, music, and gaming. It is probably the biggest company in the world with stakes in over 600 companies making it King in the Videogame and Entertainment Industry.

If you’ve ever played a game recently the chances are that Tencent either wholly owns or owns a stake in the game; just to name a few: from “Fortnite” to “League of Legends” to “Call of Duty.”

The conglomerate is run by one of China’s wealthiest businessmen: Ma Huateng, better known as Pony Ma. Tencent has invested in  a bunch of different industries, from tech to movies to video games. Yes movies including  “Men in Black International” movie, which was produced by Tencent Pictures; likewise it is set to do the same thing for upcoming films like “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Terminator: Dark Fate.”

Tencent also operates  WeChat, and the instant messaging service QQ, the latter boasts a subscription base of over 1 billion people.  Tencent also outright owns the Los Angeles based Riot Games which has produced big game names like “League of Legends” and “Teamfight Tactics.” Besides this, impressively, Tencent also own a 40% stake in the North Carolina-based Epic Games responsible for producing “Fortnite”, the Epic Games Store and the software suite that powers a huge portion of gaming (Unreal Engine). It also owns the majority of Supercell (84%), the Finnish mobile gaming powerhouse behind “Clash of Clans,” “Clash Royale,” and “Brawl Stars.”

Further to that, Tencent also has minority stakes in “Call of Duty” publisher Activision and “Assassin’s Creed” publisher Ubisoft! The way things are set up in China, to penetrate the biggest single market it’s required that US companies like Activision need to pair up with a Chinese company, and that is where Tencent comes in. Other companies like Nintendo, EA, Sony and Ubisoft need to go the same route in order to access China. Added to that, Tencent also operate WeGame, which is a Chinese version of Steam (it actually has more subscribers then Steam)

It even has a partnership with LEGO!

Tencent Games is just a component of a much larger conglomerate. Tencent controls hundreds of subsidiaries and associates in numerous industries and areas, creating a broad portfolio of ownerships and investment across a diverse range of businesses including search engine, e-commerce, retail, video gaming, real estate, software, virtual reality, ride-sharing, banking, financial services, fintech, consumer technology, computer technology, automobile, film production, movie ticketing, music production, space technology, natural resources, smartphones, big data, agriculture, medical services, cloud computing, social media, IT, advertising, streaming media, artificial intelligence, robotics, UAVs, food delivery, courier services, e-book, internet services, education and renewable energy.

Tencent has also edged its way into the world of comic books. On 21 March 2012, Tencent launched Tencent Comic, and would later become China’s largest online animation platform. In September 2017, Tencent also announced plans to introduce Chinese online comics to every market around the world, with the first being North America. It will be working with San Francisco-based digital publisher Tapas Media, a partnership that will see English-language releases of a number of popular online Chinese titles.

All this from a company started in Communist China. So the next time you hear the expression “I’m going to put my ten cents in” you better pay attention!

Tencent HQ
Tencent HQ
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