In 2018 Tencent snatched up a majority stake in the New Zealand developer of Path of Exile, Grinding Gear Games. Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile) - 80 percent Five years later, the merged companies of Activision Blizzard announced a deal to buy back Vivendi's stake in the company and become independent, and Tencent jumped at the opportunity to buy 5 percent of the company for an undisclosed amount. Activision fell under Vivendi's control way back in 2007 when it merged with subsidiary Vivendi Games in order to join forces with Blizzard and benefit from the enormous success of World of Warcraft. Years before Ubisoft, Tencent helped another company escape Vivendi: Activision Blizzard. (Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment) Activision Blizzard - 5 percent The acquisition of Ubisoft shares also heralded in a strategic partnership where Tencent would publish Ubisoft games in China, which caused its own flurry of backlash over censorship. The situation looked grim until Ubisoft struck a deal with Vivendi that saw the French conglomerate divest its stake to a variety of investors that included Tencent.Īs part of the agreement, though, Tencent is just a silent partner who cannot increase voting rights or ownership stake in Ubisoft-making a hostile takeover by Tencent impossible. For years, Vivendi had been steadily acquiring more stake in Ubisoft in hopes of ousting founder Yves Guillemot and seizing control for itself-putting thousands of jobs in jeopardy in the process. Tencent was one of several investors that helped Ubisoft survive a hostile takeover last year from Vivendi, who at the time was Ubisoft's largest stakeholder. That's probably just the beginning, though, as Tencent is rumored to be seeking a complete acquisition of Bluehole. Tencent's investment into Bluehole first began in 2017 with Tencent first acquiring 1.5 percent of Bluehole before increasing that investment to an undisclosed amount rumored to be around 10 percent. What's even more amusing is that Tencent also has rights to publish both games in China, meaning it's actually in competition with itself-not a bad place to be in. Yes, Tencent a piece of both Fortnite and PUBG, the two dominant battle royales. (Image credit: PUBG Corp) Bluehole (PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds) - 11.5 percent Last year, Fortnite made $2.4 billion, making it the most profitable game that year. While both games were failures, Save the World put Epic in the perfect spot to jump on the battle royale bandwagon and-almost by accident-create the biggest gaming pop culture phenomenon since Minecraft and Pokémon. At the same time, Epic began experimenting with live-service games like the Paragon and Fortnite: Save the World. Though developers might pay more for a successful game in the long run, it opened Unreal Engine up to an enormous community of indie developers and helped fuel intense competition between rival engine, Unity, which up until then was considered to be the best technology for small developers. With Tencent's investment, Epic scrapped Unreal Engine 4's monthly subscription in favor of a free version where Epic earned royalties on sales. Seeing that "the old model" of selling games wasn't working, Epic founder Tim Sweeney decided to join forces with Tencent to better learn about operating live-service games. Tencent's $330 million investment in Epic Games back in June 2012 triggered one of the most dramatic shifts in PC gaming of the last decade, ushering in a new era of free-to-play games as a service.
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