Coinspeaker
Tencent Acquires Almost a Third of Computer Games Developer Funcom

Chinese social media and gaming company Tencent Holding Ltd. took a 29% stake in computer games maker Funcom.
With this step, Tencent became Funcom’s largest shareholder and the shares it bought were from KGJ Capital AS.

Funcom went through its most profitable year in history and had signed an exclusive partnership with Legendary Entertainment to create a minimum of three Dune games for PC and consoles.

Funcom CEO, Rui Casais said:

“We are very pleased to see Tencent come in as the largest shareholder of Funcom. Tencent has a reputation for being a responsible long-term investor, and for its renowned operational capabilities in online games. The insight, experience, and knowledge that Tencent will bring is of great value to us and we look forward to working closely with them as we continue to develop great games and build a successful future for Funcom.”

Tencent also has stakes in numerous major games makers — including Riot Games, Epic, Supercell, Ubisoft, Paradox, Frontier and Miniclip.

The Conan maker has also confirmed few days ago a long-awaited feature for its open-world survival game, Conan Exiles. Mounts will be added to the game this December as a free update. When they go live, players will be able to capture and train their own mounts, as well as a new pet leveling system and mounted combat.

Mounts will be free to everyone, but the new DLC called Riders of Hyboria will be released simultaneously for $9.99 and as part of the Year 2 Season Pass. This will offer a wider range of mounts and armor, but not gameplay advantages.

Even though Tencent is the world’s largest gaming company by revenue, last month it warned of a difficult economic environment even as it reported a better-than-expected 35% jump in quarterly profit. The rise in the company’s gaming business reopened in the second quarter after a regulatory freeze in China and its fintech operations also had much bigger revenues. Regarding online advertising, Tencent saw a slowdown and from the company, they said they are expecting these conditions to remain.

Chief Strategy Officer James Mitchell then said:

“Our assumption is that the macro environment will remain difficult for the rest of the year and that the situation of the heavy supply of advertising inventory will continue for the rest of the year and potentially into next year.”

At the time of writing Funcom’s stocks went up by 23% in early trade, hitting a 10-week high of 15.95 Norwegian crowns.

In other news, Tencent took the top slot on local download charts with Homeland Dream, a SimCity-like game that has also some socialist phrases such as “opening and reform”. The game, called Jia Guo Meng in Chinese, gives players a possibility to build their own cities while collecting images of slogans like “make army strong and prosperous”, “made in China” and “one country, two systems”, the principle underpinning Hong Kong’s constitution.

Tencent Acquires Almost a Third of Computer Games Developer Funcom

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