Chinese technology and entertainment giant Tencent said it has more say in the strategy of companies it owns such as Techland, Funcom and Sumo Group.
This is according to Bloombergin which I spoke with the CEO of the company's gaming division, Michelle Liu, and detailed a number of recent cases in which the firm played a large role in the strategy of its developers.
One such example is the Polish company Techland, which Tencent acquired for $1.6 billion back in 2024. Following the deal, the company, at Liu's direction, brought in staff, including on-site support, to assist the studio. Liu also invited Marchevka to Tencent's headquarters in Shenzhen to discuss pricing strategy for Dying Light: The Beast, which resulted in it being released as a full game.
“We can always count on an additional point of view to help us improve the game,” Techland founder Pavel Marchevka told Bloomberg.
Liu added: “I don’t fundamentally care who’s in charge. Whatever makes the most sense for the success of our projects, that’s the way to do it.”
Tencent has also played a larger role in running Norwegian studio Funcom, with the Chinese firm urging the developer to focus on Dune: Awakening rather than other projects.
“When Tencent came in, they said, 'Look, you're scattering your attention.' You have a great IP that you have secured, you should focus on that and give up on other things,” explained Funcom CEO Rui Casais. Funcom cut staff And closed the shutters in October.
Meanwhile, Tencent has also called on Sumo Group to abandon the idea of creating original IP, instead saying the UK company should focus on its historical bread and butter, which is contract work with other studios. In this case, the firm was brought in to help Digital Extremes with seasonal content for Warframe, resulting in increased sales for the 12-year-old online game.
“It’s not a push, it’s a pull,” said Juno Shin, a member of Liu’s team.
“We 100% stay away from creative interference. However, creative people don’t always know how to handle finance, production or hiring.”
These remarks echo those made by Tencent Vice President and Head of Business Operations, Strategy and Compliance Yun-Yi Zhu GamesIndustry.biz earlier this yearwhere he discussed Sumo Group and Funcom.
Regarding the former, Zhu said Tencent helped the company “set strategic direction” on topics such as budgeting or trends. Meanwhile, when it came to Dune: Awakening, it was more about helping Funcom deliver a big game like Dune: Awakening.
“We've had our tech teams go to Funcom and sit there and work with them on backend technology and servers and things like that to make sure everything is running smoothly. And we can also help them scale in this regard,” Zhu explained.
“And then in terms of publishing, they had experience in certain regions and we had experience in others, so we teamed up to figure out how we could reach a larger audience around the world.”
