Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent has published its Q3 2021 financial results for the period ending September 30th, 2021.
There was an interesting contrast in its games business dependent on location.
Tencent’s international games revenue grew 20 per cent to $1.7 billion, attributed to the "robust performance" of Clash of Clans and Valorant.
However, domestic games revenue - increasingly impacted by government restrictions - grew by 5 per cent to $5.2 billion.
Strong international growth
"We are proactively embracing the new regulatory environment which we believe should contribute to a more sustainable development path for the industry," said Tencent CEO and chairman Ma Huateng.
"In the domestic games market, our industry-leading efforts in fully complying with new regulations significantly reduced minors’ game time and spending, fostering a healthier gameplay environment.
"We also invested actively in key strategic areas, as well as in frontier technologies, along with making new commitments in common prosperity initiatives. Looking forward, we are committed to delivering superior experiences to users, assisting enterprises to digitalise their operations and contributing to the society at large."
Furthermore, Tencent issued a statement in the report regarding the recent regulations implemented in China, such as minors being restricted from playing online games on weekdays.
"Starting from 1 September 2021, we have implemented new measures to fully comply with the latest regulations on restricting minors' game time in China," said Tencent.
"Minors accounted for 0.7 per cent of our Domestic Games time spent in September 2021, significantly declining from 6.4 per cent in September 2020.
"In terms of our Domestic Games grossing receipts, minors accounted for 1.1 per cent in September 2021, significantly declining from 4.8 per cent in September 2020. We continued our industry-leading efforts in combating minors' usage of adult accounts; for example, we upgraded our screening system to identify misused accounts."
The effect of the recent regulations has hindered the company’s domestic growth as the company proactively embraces" country-wide rules and regulations.
Tencent recently led a Series A funding round for User-generated content platform Mod.io, raising $26 million and featuring participation from Lego Ventures among others.
