Tencent has Invested in Grinding Gear Games

We have seen with all companies what happened when they were bought. No one actually made it better game, just more casual, or pay to win and so on. Maybe it won't effect instantly, but we will feel in years to come. Oh well was fun while it lasted. Probably will play a bit, but will leave to league of legend players to play this game. There is always dota 2. Supported GGG from early beta till now, bus I saw game going faster, less brain, it still has that harder stuff, but with this I am sure it will go faster pure casual in 2 years(remember my words!), since casual people will start to play more and investors will demand more effects, less brains. Well, it was really good game. Everything borns and dies. GG GGG.

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Will Tencent try to change Path of Exile?
No. We spoke to CEOs of other companies that Tencent has invested in, and have been assured that Tencent has never tried to interfere with game design or operations outside of China.

THEY LIE.

From an article about this on PCGamer: "The NZ Herald also reports that Tencent's majority stake now totals 80 percent of Grinding Gear's shares."

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

I wonder how this is supposed to match? How can you be independent, if 80 percent doesn´t belong to you?

I'm afraid that PoE will be more Chinese (LoL is the good sample, they've developed many Chinese themes for their game).

Like everyone else, I'm sad and scared by this news. Being bought by someone who partners with malware creators sounds awful.

Now,
I made my homework and apparently it seems true that they don't interfere with game development, they just want to increase profits and trust the company. They just ask to censor skeletons/zombie things for a culture matter (and I sincerely hope they'll just do it in Chinese version and don't touch anything in the international) and besides that, they now (after some googling) seem almost good guys because they sacrificed part of the revenues limiting gaming time for children
https://www.ft.com/content/dc44c963-aa27-3788-8e10-f2cfe07b61e5

Here's the link to a witness
https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/7cmxxa/what_is_the_impact_of_tencent_being_the_owner_of/

It is also true that the experience of the developer is 8 years old and Riot Games doesn't have exactly the same number of employees GGG has, so I hope this censorship thing and special features don't slow down the international version of the game.
I personally didn't find any news about Tencent being fined for contract infringement, just for copying games and the anti-malware matter, so please provide the links of everything about this company so we can see if it is actually bad or just general fear.

Again, I just hope the experiments for the Chinese version will NOT slow the game development, or that would be disappointing. Loadout did that for PS4 version and look where they are now.

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Smear wrote:

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JoOnky wrote:

so does this mean the worst kind of ppl (communist capitalists) have access to all my personal data i put into your system?

Yeah, that's my concerns as well. This game's meta data will become one huge resource for sale to the highest bidder.

Yep, this is one big cluster phuck now.

Well, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes live in Europe in 3 days, and we will have full transparency then about their privacy policy. Unless they plan to cease serving European customers, they will have to abide by the new regulation or face fines of up to 20 million Euro or 4% of their worldwide gross annual revenue, whichever is higher.

Btw., GGG, you are one of VERY FEW companies I haven't heard yet from about updating their privacy policies during the last weeks. I hope your lawyers are working overtime (especially with the additional headache that the merger brings in terms of privacy concerns). If you aren't ready by May 25, you are in deep trouble.

Thank you for being transparent GGG. As a fellow Indie dev, getting a level-headed investor with a hands-off mentality is something I'd want as well. The community's caution isn't unjustified, as bad investors can (and have) ruined great games before. I believe the outcry comes out of concern for our future, since we love this game and don't want it to lose the aspects that made it so great to begin with.

Your note about China getting some features first (that are more appropriate for their economy, culture, and playstyles) is fair. I'm happy there's a compromise that, if a feature translates well internationally, you're not afraid to DOUBLE DIP and give us the best of both worlds. Being able to release globally at the same time is an amiable goal to reach for, and I wish you all the best of luck in fulfilling it.

I will continue to support you all whenever my budget allows. Even though your investors get a cut, that doesn't take away the fact I want to make sure Path of Exile sticks around for the next decade. This is one of my favorite games, and I'm happy you have been given the chance to continue developing it!

I really don't see why everyone's putting up so much of a fuss...

They basically just agreed to fund them so that Path can be the best that it can, and all they want is the Chinese server.
Speaking of the Chinese version, it's already so different from the international version, what difference does it make if they were entirely controlled by Tencent?
Every change so far and any further changes in the future will only ever apply to the Chinese server, and again, the Chinese server is already so different, why is it suddenly a problem to everyone now?

When they say GGG is independent, it does not mean independently funded, it means independently run. GGG will continue to have full control of what they do and how they do it, Tencent is just giving them funding in return for something that has literally 0 relation to everyone that isn't currently in China.
Path won't change, and if it does it's not because Tencent is demanding them to (Not for the international version anyway).

The only thing that would make sense to be complaining about is the supporter packs. People were only willing to spend hundreds on a game because they thought it wasn't as rich as it now is.
Aside from that there shouldn't be anything to worry about.

I do believe this will make triple-win result happens: 1. Tencent happy their business expansion with GGG product force inside mainland China as well as Riot's LoL force; 2. GGG get very strong finance support from the Sugar Daddy Tencent, and use same solution like Riot: Development and international market independing; 3. The biggest winner is gamer like you and me, since GGG has no finance pressure in the near future, we don't need to press "M" to support their finance anymore, we only keep focus on new content and enjoy the game without our own "finance pressure", so it's simple, everyone happy!!!

Pls remain free2play and will we be seeing some Chinese stuff sooner or later?