Tencent has Invested in Grinding Gear Games

This is concerning .....


And yet, I just discovered that Tencent has actually been owning Riot Games for like 7 years OO.

So .. who knows .... still, it's concerning.

I'm not happy to learn this. Didn't find out until right now. I've dedicated my gaming life to this game, I'm still not that good, but that's ok. I have fun with this game. Now I learn that you've sold out. My biggest concern has always been a concern with path of exile. You don't have an end of life plan in place. Now that you are beholden to some mega corporation, they will have fiscal requirements. If you don't meet those requirements you will have to change your business strategy or die. They will shut you down without a second thought, you're money to them, nothing else matters. When that happens, the game I've spent so much money on to support will be gone. You will become pay to win. And when they've milked us for all we're worth, they will shut down the servers, and no one will ever be able to play this magnificent game again. I will have wasted all my money, for absolutely nothing. You can still prevent this, maybe they won't come down for a long time, but the servers will die eventually. I want an end of life plan, please.

seems like ok so far.

This is what business does to grow, it has nothing to do with developer's philosophy which is obviously not being changed at all.

It's already exciting to see different features of Tencent's PoE servers, such as pets that gather orbs for you or expanding your inventory.
This is not p2w at all as it only saves some time and makes PoE gaming more appealing for lazy clickers like me ;)

Perhaps we'll see some of these features on global servers, and personally, i'd be glad to see it happen.

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XNtrysyti wrote:

Yikes, this made me nervous when I read the headline. Thankfully, you answered most of the most important questions with regards to how GGG is going to operate. I have PTSD from games dying the moment a Chinese investor gets a majority stake in a gaming company. 99% of the time they turn into pay-to-win unplayable garbage with no new content. Hoping you guys are that 1%...

I can't help but think you guys were still tricked though... looks like I'm not touching any more supporter packs.

*You can tell from the knee-jerk reactions from most of the comments that this is not generally considered a buff.

*proceeds to buy shadowstalker and master soulstealer.

Here are my two cents to Tencent.


The first question which comes up:
Why the heck would a company invest millions in a game studio if they get nothing in return?

There must be a business model, right?

What would the business model of Tencent be?

We can only estimate, but looking at this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent#Copying_claims) we might come up with a theory: Tencent buys shares in "offshore" companies to acquire the source code.

...Not to make revenue by improving the product, not by interfering with development "outside China".

The actual source code is worth more than a few million dollars, it's the intellectual property you can't create out of thin air.

What will happen next?

For the western world and gamers nothing will change. But what will happen in China?

If "Pony Ma" from Tencent is really the "king of copycats" as stated in the Wikipedia article, then we will probably see hundreds of Path Of Exile clones all over the Chinese market, all under different names and slightly different looks. Tencent will not interfere with development, it doesn't need to, it will generate revenue by selling these clones in China (presumably on "Mobl" = mobile phones, do you guys not have phones?).

And because Tencent is active only in mainland China (excluding Hong Kong), it's going to be very hard to figure out what Tencent is actually doing. GGG will stay out of the China business and probably not investigate.

So, what do get from this deal?

Nothing. But China gets a ton of Path Of Exile clones, which they can buy for actual cash, unlike the original. This will fill up the pockets of Tencent, GGG won't see a cent.

After all Tencent is all about: `We get ten cent for every cent you make (on the Chinese market by creating ten clones off your game)`

GGG has sold their source code to the Chinese market. Path Of Exile can no longer be seen as a unique product.

Disclosure: I'm not buying any more supporter packs. Ever wondered why the new expansion is called "Betrayal"? Sad irony.

"Tencent has acquired a majority stake in Grinding Gear Games."

"We will remain an independent company and there won't be any big changes to how we operate."

These two statements are potentially at commercial odds with one another. Tencent now has a vested interest in the financial future of Grinding Gear Games (GGG) and if GGG isn't profitable, Tencent can leverage their majority stake to make GGG change in such a way as to be more profitable or face consequences.

Having read about the new privacy policy for the game Ring of Elysium, also owned by Tencent. I'm wondering if the privacy policy I agreed to is anything like this.

My question is; is the privacy policy for PoE written by GGG or Tencent?

I'm a Chinese. I was born in China and I moved to Australia for freedom. I've been playing POE for 3 years.

We, Chinese people, all know tencent is not better than Huawei, they are spying on everything. their TP anti-cheat software is also considered as a rogue software spying on user information. They have the biggest datacentre in China collecting and processing user data for government use.

GGG you might think it's ok, they are just investors. but you will find it's wrong.

well...i only just learned about this horrible news... i definitely hope they haven't been doing ANYTHING with your game like they have the epic games storefront. cause if i find out they have...sorry, but i'm gonna drop this game on the spot and warn others about the problem.