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Tencent's relationship with Riot strained over differences on mobile gaming

Riots declining playerbase also a point of contention

Tencent's relationship with Riot strained over differences on mobile gaming

It sounds like the last few years have been somewhat rocky for Riot Games and Tencent.

That's according to a report from The Information, which saw the firm chat to over 40 people, that claims Tencent is more interested in mobile games and battle royale than the MOBA genre at the moment.

Since Tencent bought Riot back in 2011, The League of Legends playerbase has dipped. The Chinese giant reportedly asked Riot to turn its PC MOBA into a mobile title; something the LoL firm resisted.

Strained

This mobile MOBA went on to be Honor of Kings - Arena of Valor in the West - with Riot employees shocked at just how similar it looked to League of Legends during early stages. The art style was changed, but the game went on to be a huge success both in Tencent's native China and North America.

Tencent is reportedly now more interested in the burgeoning battle royale genre, holding stakes in both Fortnite and Unreal Engine 4 maker Epic Games and Playerunknown's Battlegrounds firms Bluehole and PUBG Corp. As well as the massive success of both of these games, Tencent's new focus is also in part due to the aforementioned drop in League of Legends' playerbase.

Our sister site PCGamesInsider.Biz has the full story.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.